


Tumblr Snippets

by fourfreedoms



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Teen Witch, Barebacking, Breathplay, Established Relationship, Fake Dating, First Times, Grinding, Horror, M/M, Makeup Sex, Rookies, Wall Sex, alternate universe - what's your number
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-03-16 14:15:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 49,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3491390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourfreedoms/pseuds/fourfreedoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of short fic written on tumblr over the last year. A full index of snippets can be found <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3491390/navigate">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. De-aged to 16 (March 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt: "deaged-patrick where the team has to wait for him to reage up from 16 back to however old he is and has to watch him through ~puberty~ while jonny and his thighs are around"

This. Sucks.

The worst part, the absolute _worst_ part about being a teenager—more than the acne, more than the greasy hair, more than the voice change—was the uncontrollable urge to fuck everything. All the time. Sometimes popping wood was as easy as the bus driving by.

The team doctor said just wait it out. Well. Patrick doesn’t fucking want to wait it out. He’s a 25 year old, stuck in a 16-year-old body, constantly confronted with Jonathan Toews’ half-clothed form. In what universe is that fair?

They’ve been training in the weight room (‘gotta put that weight back on, son, don’t know how long you’ll be this way,’ Q had said) and Patrick has already gotten hard pedaling away on his bike, getting his form corrected on a squat, and doing crunches. His Under Armour is really thin and it just rubs…things, okay? Like every time he moves. What the hell is he supposed to do about that exactly? Put his cup on?

He’s benching with Sharpy spotting for him (read: texting his wife and half-assedly saying ‘one more’, every once in a while), and the exertion is at least enough that he hasn’t gotten wood for ten whole minutes. It’s a record. Did he get hard this often in his teens? He doesn’t remember it. How did he ever do anything but jerk off if that was the case?

"Jesus, Patrick, that is way too much weight," Johnny says, walking over and moving Sharpy, who goes easily enough, aside. 

Patrick pauses, bar just above his chest. He’s benching 200, which is normal for him. So what if it’s about 60 pounds heavier than what he was benching at 16, he’s fucking motivated alright? There’s a lot of extra testosterone in his system, boners that need killing, and Jonathan Toews should fucking witness. God, the backwards baseball cap, the tight sweat damp shirt, is Johnny trying to kill him here? He lifts the bar again. He can do this. Ten more reps, at least.

Which is of course when he looks up and realizes he can see straight up Johnny’s nylon shorts, where the asshole is just free-balling it.

"Whoa!" Johnny says, snagging the bar before he drops it across his chest. He easily sets it back in the cradle, leaving Patrick, breathing hard, with nothing to distract him, looking straight up at Johnny’s sweaty and flushed body. God he looks good like that. A bead of sweat travels down his throat, sliding over his collarbone. Patrick wants to lick it off.

Fuck! Everything!

"You okay there?" Johnny asks, peering down at him. It’s the same tone of voice as the one he uses on the kids at skate clinics.

Which pisses him off. Patrick is not actually 16. Jackass should remember. He scrambles off the bench. Sharpy, where the fuck are you? Now would be a brilliant time to play a prank. Unreliable bastard.

"I’m fine, I’m fine!" he shouts, voice cracking.

Johnny eyes him a little warily. “Yeah?”

Patrick throws up his hands. “Jesus, yes! Alright?”

He survived rooming with Johnny for five whole years, never betraying a thing. Made sure never to look too long, never to get carried away. And now he’s sixteen again, how the fuck can he fight his own body? There is no justice. None at all.

He nearly cries out when Johnny pats him on the back. No, asshole. Don’t fucking touch! Patrick could barely stave off erection at the mere sight of him, now what is supposed to do when Johnny is squeezing the back of his neck?

"Hey, it’ll be okay," Johnny says, giving him one last pat, before turning and heading for the locker room.

Yeah, no. Patrick really doesn’t think it will.

He thinks he must have fucked up, like really fucking bad, in a prior life. Like maybe he was responsible for building I-290 or the Harold Washington library or something.

That is absolutely the only reason he can think of that Johnny would get it into his head to barge into his hotel room, throw the bathroom door open, and pull the curtain back while Patrick is in the shower, ‘relieving some tension’ as it were.

“Gah!” he shouts, practically leaping into the air and slipping in the tub. He drops his dick, scrabbling against the shower tile to hold himself up.

Johnny drops his eyes to Patrick’s erection, because of course he’s still hard. He’s biologically sixteen, nothing is killing this thing, not even the horrified shame and embarrassment coursing through him.

“Oh,” he says, meeting Patrick’s eyes.

“'Oh?'” Patrick shouts, “'Oh?' What the fuck, man! Get out!”

“No,” Johnny says.

“No?” Patrick squawks. He inhales, getting ready to tear his psycho (fucking gorgeous) teammate a new one.

Johnny kicks his shoes off and climbs in in front of Patrick with all of his clothes on.

“Have you actually lost your mind?” Patrick demands. The water darkens the fabric of Johnny’s shirt, plastering it to his chest and abs. Patrick looks down, away, anywhere. That’s infinitely worse, because Johnny's nylon gym shorts are clinging to his thighs, the outline of his dick clearly delineated. He swallows hard.

“This is what’s got you so agitated?” Johnny says, gesturing to Patrick’s front, his bobbing cock. Water showers down on them, a little cooler than Patrick likes it, but it was a sanity measure. And Johnny’s nipples are hard underneath his water-logged shirt. That is totally not a whimper that comes out of his mouth. Patrick keeps his eyes determinedly on Johnny’s face. That seems the safest. He notices that Johnny's eyelashes are shiny and spiky from the water. Sometimes, it floors Patrick how, well, beautiful he is. Ugh, he’s noticing _eyelashes_ now. He’s very seriously considering that he might have been genetically hardwired to just find everything about Johnny attractive. It’s not like he’s that great looking or—yeah, okay, no, who the fuck is he fooling?

“It’s natural!” Patrick looks away, his cheeks are so hot the spray feels downright freezing on his face. “You didn’t have to jump into the shower about it.”

Johnny chuckles, spinning him around and drawing him backwards, because Johnny can simply do that now that he has 60 whole pounds and another two extra inches on him. Patrick’s shoulder blades meet his chest with a wet squelch.

“What is this!” Patrick knows he’s screeching. He thinks that’s perfectly valid. Jonathan Toews is manhandling him in his own shower. The levels of not okay this is—

Johnny closes his fist around Patrick’s cock and Patrick gets a little distracted. He’s pulling him off with slow, hard strokes, surrounding Patrick with his bulk, because god, he’s huge, he’s an adult, and Patrick very definitely is not. Patrick cries out and throws his head back against Johnny’s shoulder, nearly slipping again. Johnny takes his weight, pulling him in tighter. He watches his dick slide through Johnny’s hand, grip slippery but sure, and feels the inane urge to explain that his dick is bigger than this in reality. Or, sort of, when he’s back to being 25 that is.

“Okay,” Patrick pants, he has to close his eyes, he can’t look anymore or he’ll come. Which would be great. Only, hey, he’s got his pride on the line. “What are you even doing?”

Johnny thumbs the head of his dick and Patrick can’t help the choked off-little moan that’s practically punched out of him. It shouldn’t be this easy, but he’s half-mad from it at this point, the throbbing ache in his balls, the warmth in his belly, his body’s insistent desire to come right now, right now, RIGHT NOW.

“Do you fucking know what you look like? That fucking mouth of yours. Do you have any idea? Prancing around like absolute jailbait.” Johnny tells him. He drags Patrick back hard against his hips so that he can feel his erection through the shorts. “Jesus, Kaner, you’re not the only one who’s been experiencing a little difficulty.”

He dips his head to lick shower water from Patrick’s shoulder and well, that’s all she wrote. Patrick’s coming, all over the place, his whole weight dropped back on Johnny. Johnny holds him up, sliding open-mouthed kisses over Patrick’s shoulder. His mouth is hot in contrast to the shower water. Patrick shakes in his arms.

Finally he gets his feet back under him and bats Johnny’s arms off of him, so he can turn to look at him. Johnny’s erection is entirely obscene in his shorts. He’s still wearing his fucking baseball cap. Seriously. He couldn’t wait five minutes to take his clothes off and like explain to Patrick what was happening? Now that he’s not achingly aroused logic is all rushing back to him.

Johnny drops his hand and palms his dick through his shorts.

Well, that lasted two seconds. Patrick is fucking hard. Again. He breathes deep.

“You should fuck me,” he says.

Johnny reels him in, palming Patrick’s ass as he draws him close. “You know that’s not going to happen, right?” he says, even as fingers dip down the cleft of his ass. Patrick shudders.

“But it could?” he says hopefully.

Johnny chuckles, draws him in tighter. “It will…just, not when you’re stuck as a sixteen-year-old.”

“I am _still 25_ ,” Patrick shouts.

“Yup,” Johnny replies equably and then kisses him. It’s probably to shut him up. Patrick knows him. He’s going to try to distract him from the sex offensive he has planned. Well it won’t work. Patrick has wanted Johnny for nearly a decade. He’s not waiting any longer. Johnny hauls him in close, up and against his body, so that their cocks grind together. And goddamn it.

Patrick’s come all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I like Jonny getting into the shower with all his clothes on, since I recycled this in "The Study of Dreams" written with Joyfulseeker.


	2. Grinding, Hawaii Part I, (March 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt: "for the semi-NSFW meme, kane/toews, 1: grinding or 10: pushing up against the wall, whichever you prefer to write."

Jonny’s gotten gold from the sun in the few days since they arrived, unlike Patrick who just burns and has to apply a million layers of SPF 50 and hangout under a beach umbrella for long stretches. Jonny trudges up the beach, surfboard under his arm, paler flesh revealed with water weighing his trunks down low on his hips.

He’s covered in bruises. Learning to surf isn’t going so smoothly, but it’s Jonny and he keeps trying, somehow unbothered by the many chirps he’s getting from the other guys. He looks good anyway, healthy muscle, forearms corded with veins. Patrick has to look away.

Hawaii, might be Jonny’s new favorite place, fresh fish with every meal, tons of sunshine, Patrick isn’t really paying attention, but from what the other guys are saying he’s hooking up a lot, with the local girls, with the other guests at the resort. Patrick kind of hates him.

"You almost didn’t completely embarrass yourself there," Biscuit tells him, saluting him with his bottle of beer.

"Yeah, yeah," Jonny says, sticking his board in the sand. He’s been wearing this friendship bracelet that a girl at a hospital they visited had made him, and the sight of it, water-logged and dark against Jonny’s strong wrist—well, it’s funny how the little things make it too much.

Patrick clears his throat and excuses himself. “Been out in the sun too long,” he says when the other guys groan and protest at him. It’s not a lie, he can feel the skin across the bridge of his nose pulling tight when he smiles, the sure sign of the beginnings of a burn.

"Shut up," he tells them, "I’ll see you at dinner."

He ignores Jonny’s dark eyes.

They rented a set of beachfront villas for team. Most of the guys are doubled up, Jonny’s with both Duncs and Seabs, but Patrick’s got his own thankfully. He just needs to take a moment, a cold shower maybe. He’ll be fine in the evening.

The little garden path, heavily studded with palm trees, birds of paradise, and hibiscus creates a dense canopy against the sun, a little windbreak against the sound of the surf.

He thinks he imagines it when he hears Jonny call his name, but when it comes again, he turns around and finds Jonny jogging after him.

He stops in the shade of the palms, squinting at him. “What?”

Jonny slows to a stop and shakes his head. He pauses for a moment and then says, “Why do you always look at me like that?”

"Like what?" Patrick replies, a little louder than he mean to.

Jonny bites his lip and shrugs.

Patrick turns away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”

Jonny makes a frustrated noise and then thrusts him up against the side of his villa. He smells of ocean and coconut and sunscreen and when he steps in close, cool flesh and wet bathing suit meeting Patrick’s sun-warmed overheated skin, Patrick shivers, mouth opening on a gasp. Jonny ducks in before he can ask ‘what the fuck?’ and tilts his chin right into a kiss.

"Fuck," Patrick says when Jonny backs off a little. He swipes his tongue over his lower lip tasting salt and the vague hint of mint from the gum Jonny always chews.

Jonny makes a sound in the back of his throat, grinding in closer, thumb pushing at the corner of his mouth to open Patrick up for his tongue. Patrick’s trapped, wet all down his front, water from Jonny’s trunks running down his own legs.

Jonny’s hot and hard against his hip and Patrick uses his back to push off the wall to get closer to Jonny as much as possible, to thrust against that erection while Jonny kisses him slow and sweet. The slick sounds of their mouths meeting and their harsh breaths are the only noise over the waves. Jonny pushes him back into the wall, palm over his heart, and slides a leg between Patrick’s so that he’s riding his thigh. Patrick whines high in his throat, fingers curling in Jonny’s swimsuit, digging into the strong muscle of his ass.

Jonny pushes in closer, forcing Patrick up onto his tiptoes, when his knee meets the wall between Patrick's legs, lifting him higher onto his thigh.

He moans, turns his face into Jonny’s neck.

"Yeah," Jonny breathes, "just like that."

He takes Patrick apart right there, pressed up against the side of the villa, speared in place by sticky kisses and the pressure of his thigh, whispering filth and encouragement. He backs off, muttering expletives, pressing their foreheads together when Patrick finally works his hands beneath the waistband of his trunks, squeezing and pulling Jonny up and into him.

Patrick comes like that, a shuddery mess, with Jonny dragging the tip of his nose over Patrick’s cheek, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his jaw.

Jonny gives him a moment, before straightening his leg and leaning away, letting Patrick sink back down, feet flat on the ground.

Patrick stares at him, a little amazed, covered in goosebumps from the shock of Jonny’s wet skin.

He looks at the obscene press of Jonny’s trunks plastered to his erection and makes a high-pitched strangled sound in his throat. He wants to go back inside the cool dark interior of the villa and let Jonny work that dick inside him. He wants all the weight of Jonny’s body on top of him, pressing him into the mattress, pounding him until he breaks and says every stupid thing he’s held in for so long. There’s a blood-dark bruise just above Jonny’s hip from where he took a tumble on the surfboard, and Patrick wants to close his grip on it and make Jonny tremble. He wants to fuck Jonny up, so that he’s as spun around as Patrick always is.

Jonny’s flushed all down his chest. He chews at his lower lip. “You wanna?” he asks with a bit of a grin.

Patrick thunks his head back against the wall. He laughs. “Yeah.”


	3. Awkwardly Buying Condoms, Hawaii Part II (April 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A follow-up to the previous fic set in Hawaii...

There are some logistical issues to Patrick’s plan to have Jonny fuck him. There’s no lube, he wasn’t planning this after all. He doesn’t even have condoms. Jonny does, but they’re back in the place he’s sharing with Duncs and Seabs, and running off to get them when they still have no lube is not going to help them.

They make do. He gets Jonny off in the shower cubical, pressing him up against the tile, and jerking him slow and steady. He does it for so long his wrist aches and Jonny’s cursing at him to just finish it.

"Such a tease," Jonny says, choked up, using the wall to hold his head up more than anything else. "Such a fucking tease."

He comes with a shudder, an expression moving across his face that looks like pain.

Further logistical issues arrive when they realize that Jonny only has his damp board shorts and no other clothing and they’ve got dinner at one of the resort’s restaurants in half an hour.

"Gonna have to take another shower," Jonny says and makes a face when he draws them up his legs. He knocks off an awkward salute and then practically sprints out of the villa. Patrick’s left, towel wrapped around his waist, wondering what the hell happened.

*

That night at dinner, they’ve put the team at a long table on the patio of the restaurant. Jonny shows up a few minutes late in a soft button-down with the sleeves rolled up, khaki shorts, and boat shoes. He looks like a prep school kid straight out of New England. Patrick wants to eat him. And then maybe strangle him for it.

Jonny tends to bring that out in him.

Patrick’s down at one end, mostly lost in his own thoughts, picking at his food, wondering if they’re going to try this again later. Or if…that was just it. There was no ‘hold that thought’ or ‘to be continued,’ and Jonny never really gave him a reason for why now, why this moment.

"Hey, Kaner!" Sharpy says, "Kaner, Jesus, pass the bread will you?"

"Hmm? Oh." Patrick looks up. He blushes when he finds the entire team staring at him. Sharpy clears his throat and Patrick rolls his eyes and sends the bread basket down the table. When he looks up again, Jonny’s staring at him from several seats down, eyes dark, teeth dug into his lower lip.

Patrick takes a moment to realize he was rubbing his mouth absentmindedly with the tips of his fingers, trying to recall the sensation of Jonny’s mouth on his. He lets his hand drop and turns back to his food.

Jonny keeps sneaking glances at him and Patrick knows it’s dirty pool, but he can’t help doing it on purpose—sucking his lower lip and letting his teeth drag across it while he’s listening to Smitty explain the plot of some movie. Curling his tongue delicately around his fork during desert. Thumbing the rim of his water glass. When dinner wraps up, he excuses himself to go the bathroom. They’re supposed to go dancing afterwards, but Patrick says he’ll catch up.

He hopes. He doesn’t know what he hopes, but he gets it anyway when Jonny accosts him right outside the bathroom door after he’s washed his hands, wrapping an arm around his waist and saying short and sharp, right against his throat, “Supplies,” in a threadbare voice.

Patrick shudders. “Yeah.”

The first pharmacy they hit, a mom and pop store, has condoms, but is a big fat no on the lube.

"God, why?" Jonnny asks, staring at the little shelf right next to the feminine hygiene in betrayed consternation. Patrick can’t stop laughing.

The guy at the register glares at them and Patrick picks up a pack of Twizzlers and a bottle of water, and grins real big. No sir. We aren’t being assholes in your pharmacy.

They try the Longs up the road next. They can’t find the section. It’s cleverly hidden. That or the people who work here are assholes who like embarrassing their customers. That’s a possibility. Patrick would probably do that if he worked in a Longs. When he finally gives up and asks, they find themselves at Visine and Refresh PM eye lubricant. Okay, yes, these jack-knobs are definitely doing it on purpose.

"What is even happening right now?" Jonny asks, incredulous. He knocks Patrick’s shoulder and Patrick uses it to pull him in close, pressing their foreheads together. He breathes Jonny in for a short moment and then backs off, not missing the way Jonny’s eyes go dark and molten. It’s stupid. They’re in Hawaii, which isn’t exactly known for its culture of team sports, but half the people in Wailea are from somewhere else. They can’t really afford to push it. He wants to do it again and again anyway.

For as long as Jonny will give it to him.

They finally find lube stashed in with the adult diapers.

"Sexy," Patrick says, tongue in his cheek.

Jonny, man on a mission, looks at their options. “CVS brand? Nope. Astroglide? Jesus, what is this 1985?”

He discards the Doc Jonson box labeled Good Head: Strawberry Flavor and both the silicone and water-based Gun Oil. He pauses, picking up a red and aqua tube. “Oh good, I’ve found it.” He tosses it to Patrick. 

Patrick catches it and then looks down at the label. It says Hott Products: Liquid Virgin in cursive script. “What? I’m sorry? What?”

Jonny can’t stop laughing.

Patrick jabs him in the side and finally grabs a box of KY. He looks around quickly and then ducks in close to kiss Jonny. “Lemme just go pay,” he says, putting a whisper of space between them.

Jonny snorts, and palms the front of his pants, grinding his heel right over Patrick’s dick. The box drops right out of Patrick’s nerveless fingers and Jonny snatches it right out of the air. “Yeah, I don’t think so,” Jonny says and then picks up a big box of Durex with a cheeky smile, before disappearing for the register.

Patrick meets him outside a few moments later, Jonny swinging the plastic bag with the supplies and whistling. Patrick can’t help cracking up as soon as he sees him. What a disaster.

Jonny pops his gum at him and grins. “Like being 17 again,” he says and the way he looks at Patrick, right there, out on the street in the warm night air, lets him know he’d be kissing Patrick if he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I really, really like shower sex...


	4. Striptease, Hawaii Part III, (April 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the semi-nsfw meme prompt of "stripping off." Warning for the practice of less than safe sex.

"Slow," Patrick says, propped up against the leather-covered headboard, elbows on his knees.

Jonny pauses in the middle of unbuttoning his shirt, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

Patrick tilts his head back, resettles his shoulders. “Yup.”

Jonny blows out a breath and shakes his head, but he slows down, carefully unthreading buttons until a slice of sun-deepened gold skin is revealed. The last one pops free of it’s buttonhole, and the two sides of the shirt part, just wide enough to reveal the edge of his flat dusky pink nipples.

Patrick bites his lip.

"Slow enough for you?" Jonny drops his head and drags his hand slowly down over the ripples in his abs to land on the button of his fly. The dark trail of hair disappearing into his waistband is only the faintest line, Patrick imagines running his fingertips down it now that he knows how soft that stretch of skin is.

The sound of Jonny’s zipper is loud in the room with only the quiet shush of the ceiling fan overhead and the murmur of the surf in the distance. When he finally shoves his shorts down, the waistband catches on his thighs, dragging his boxer briefs with it. Jonny closes his eyes and breathes out when it chafes his dick.

The shorts hit the floor revealing Jonny’s half-hard cock. Patrick watches it fill under his gaze, Jonny staring back at him almost defiant. He fists it, once, twice.

"Your show," he says, voice edged with gravel.

Patrick’s still mostly dressed, just his shirt is off. He walks on his knees to the foot of the bed, just the right height to draw Jonny in for a kiss. Jonny accepts it easily, letting Patrick draw him in close to fuck his mouth with his tongue and ignoring the vulnerability of his own nakedness. Apparently he can multi-task, because his clever fingers go to Patrick’s fly, pulling it apart and shoving it down, careful to make sure the denim doesn’t abrade as it goes.

Patrick lets out a soft 'mmm' when Jonny’s hands go to his cheeks, spreading them, fingertips drawing down his perineum. Patrick trapped himself but good here. The shorts tangled around his knees make it difficult to move and he has to put his full weight on Jonny to kick them off and keep kissing him.

"How do you like it?" Patrick asks him when they part for air, mouth swollen and abraded.

"Fuck, Patrick," Jonny says eyes on Patrick's lips, keeping up that teasing circling of his fingers around the rim of Patrick's hole. "Wanna be able to kiss you."

He takes matters into his own hands before Patrick can answer, dropping his arm to tighten it around Patrick’s thighs and then twisting his body so that he lands on the bed, Patrick straddled across his thighs.

"Nice trick," Patrick says dryly. Nevertheless breathless and turned on. 

"Suited my purposes."Jonny meets his eyes and then drops them back to his mouth. Patrick takes the hint and bends to kiss him again, blanketing Jonny in his weight. From the way Jonny moans, Patrick thinks he likes being covered like this, held down to the bed, letting Patrick takes what he wants. He makes only the smallest of adjustments, shifting Patrick better over his thighs so that their cocks align.

"God," Patrick says against his mouth.

"Mmhm," Jonny hums and shifts him again. 

Patrick flexes his hips against him. They’re so good like this. He’s pictured taking Jonny to bed an awful fucking lot over the years. He imagined it would be good, because he was so fucking into Jonny he would be more than happy to give him whatever he wanted. But fucking hell, he didn’t know it would be like this.

"You wanna come first?" Jonny asks. The 'before I fuck you' is implied. Patrick doesn’t. He wants to come on Jonny’s dick. He’s not sure how to say it so that it doesn’t sound as intimate as it really is.

Jonny presses his fingertips back against his hole and Patrick clenches up against him. Jonny circles it and Patrick thinks the sound he makes answers for him. “Okay,” Jonny breathes, shuddery and deep, blessedly just as turned on as Patrick. 

He throws a hand over to the nightstand, scrabbling until he comes up with both the condoms and the lube. He flicks the cap off with one hand, rotating it in his palm to squeeze it out so that he doesn’t have to stop teasing Patrick’s opening with his other hand. He surprises Patrick by reaching between them and slicking himself up rather than Patrick’s opening. For one fraught moment Patrick worries he's just going to force his cock in, no prep or anything. 

Jonny doesn’t, he shifts so that his slickened cock runs right between Patrick’s cheeks, head of dick catching at Patrick’s opening. Using his dick to spread lube around. Shit it's hot. Jonny does this over and over again, all through kissing Patrick, until Patrick’s just breathing into his mouth, trying not to lose it all over Jonny’s abs. He thinks about the thick streaks of white painting Jonny’s stomach and it just makes it worse.

Jonny squeezes more lube into his hand and this time, he brings it to Patrick’s hole, easily pushing in two coated fingers, doing it twice more to force the lube in deep until at last, his fingers leave Patrick’s ass with a wet squelch. “Do you need more?” he asks, eyes dark. His voice is steady, patient, but he keeps flexing his hips against Patrick, giving away how much he'd like to just fuck into Patrick already. 

"Think you can wait through another?" Patrick asks. He's good, loose enough, just giving Jonny shit for the sake of giving him shit.

"Can you?" Jonny fires back.

Patrick looks down at him. He scoffs hard, raising himself up on his knees and then back, impaling himself on Jonny’s dick. Jonny gasps. “There’s no…Patrick there’s no…”

Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. That is Jonny’s dick opening him up, sliding deep inside him. He drops down across Jonny's chest, bowled over. 

Jonny makes a strangled sound, turning his face into Patrick’s throat. “…condom,” he finally gets out, shuddering underneath Patrick.

That was stupid. He can’t bring himself to care. He fucks himself on Jonny’s dick, back bent so that he can still kiss him through it. Every time he bottoms out, Jonny seems to tense underneath him, like he’s hanging on to make sure he doesn’t come too early. Patrick feels like he’s been riding the edge for hours. In a way he has. For weeks, months, years even.

He wants it harder and deeper, but this angle, lying nearly horizontal, close as it is, isn’t good for that. He wants Jonny to make him feel it, who knows when they’ll get to do this again. 

"Help me out here, Jonny," he asks, trying to ignore the whine in his voice.

Jonny gets his feet flat on the bed, snapping his hips up, fucking in so deep and hard, Patrick cries out again and again. He comes like that, half-collapsed on Jonny’s chest, shaking apart so hard Jonny follows only a few moments later.

"So good, so…fucking…good," Jonny says, emptying himself inside.

They lay like that for long moments, just breathing hard, Jonny softening inside him, until finally Patrick’s thighs can’t take it anymore and he has to roll off of him. He got what he wanted. His come is smeared all over Jonny’s firmly muscled belly.

"You shouldn’t have," Jonny says after a long moment, looking at the box of condoms lying on the sheets next to them. He shifts his legs, trying to shake them out, palm over his heart. He’s a picture, a study in fucked out grace.

"Do you trust me?" Patrick asks. If he’d been thinking he wouldn’t have done it.

Jonny holds his gaze. “Yeah, I fucking trust you.”

"Are you…"

Jonny scooches over on the bed, just enough to press his lips to Patrick’s. “I haven’t had sex since I was last tested,” he says when he shifts away.

"What? I heard the guys razzing you about hooking up." 

Jonny laughs and shakes his head. “I was uh...actually just going out for a walk every night. Duncs and Seabs didn’t believe it.

"Jesus," Patrick says, throwing an arm over his face. "Jesus."

"What, what is it?" Jonny asks.

"Nothing, man," Patrick finally tells him. He doesn’t know how to say that hearing that creates space in Patrick’s chest for hope, which is not something he can afford. “That was something else.”

"Yeah…" Jonny says, sounding like he’s thinking hard. "Do you…want me to go?"

Patrick just fucked Jonny bare. Of course he doesn’t want him to go. It nearly bursts out of his mouth, but instead, at the last minute, he manages to say, “Can’t do it again in the morning if you aren’t here.”

Jonny laughs. “Yeah, okay.”


	5. Fake Dating (April 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is something I started writing after the Stanley Cup win last year. Some of the references are prettttttty old, haha, you’ll notice (Jason Collins’ sexuality was kind of a new deal and it looked like he was never going to sign with a team, Snowden, Roy Hibbert). I don’t know if I’m going to finish it ever, but maybe this will inspire me to get on it…  
> -Lauren, April 2014
> 
>  
> 
> **Looks Can Kill. So, Darling, Now, You’re Dead.**

It all goes to hell in the middle of July, in the midst of the worst heatwave Chicago’s seen since 1995. Patrick doesn’t hear about it for nearly two days at home back in Buffalo, and with Johnny in Hawaii, completely unreachable, it’s no surprise it spins so far out of control. 

He’s still in bed, enjoying the fact that he can get up whenever the hell he wants. Amanda’s asleep next to him, and it’s shaping up to be pretty much the perfect lazy summer day. 

And then Erica calls and says the most deeply ominous thing he can think of: “Let me start off by saying I don’t think any of this is true...”

“Huh?” Patrick says, too tired to understand what the hell is going on. 

“I don’t know where he got his information or even why he thought such an allegation would be appropriate in the wake of everything that happened...”

“What are you talking about?” Patrick demands, eyes darting over to Amanda when she makes a noise of protest and rolls over. 

“Andy Highmore?” she says, incredulously.“The kid who got beaten up on the south side by those three guys in Blackhawks jerseys! You don’t know about this?” 

“Whoa,” Patrick says, extricating himself from his covers and leaving the room as quietly as he can. “No, I hadn’t heard that a kid got beat up by fans. Amanda and I have been living kind of unplugged for the past two days.” 

“It wasn’t just some kid, Pat,” Erica replies, “he was gay. They put him in the freakin’ hospital.” 

Patrick rubs at his forehead. “Oh, jesus.” They’ve been in the clear with GLAAD and the CGHA since 2010, when Sopel went to Pride after the comments about Chris Pronger ruffled some feathers. But they didn’t take the cup to Pride this year and he can already see people drawing horrible connections, especially in the wake of the backlash following Roy Hibbert’s “no homo” comment. 

“That’s not even why I’m calling,” she tells him after a long pause. “About an hour ago Perez Hilton posted to his blog saying and I quote, ‘Square-jawed and serious Blackhawk’s Captain Jonathan Toews surely will not stand for this from his fans given his long-term relationship with winger and lovably notorious wild man Patrick Kane.’”

“Uh?” That’s all he’s got. “I’m sorry, what?” 

“Perez Hilton just outed you as gay,” she splutters, “with--with Johnny!” 

“Nobody’s going to believe that,” he finally manages. He’s not gay. Definitely not with Johnny. They both have girlfriends. People the world over have seen the pictures of him in bed with that one chick from way back when. That doesn’t even make any sense. 

“Patrick,” she says, “they _do_ believe it.” 

Which is how, when the front office calls, barely fifteen minutes later, he’s already got a flight booked to Midway and car service waiting at the other end to pick him up. 

*

He doesn’t know how they track down Johnny from where he’s staying in god knows where on the Island of Kauaʻi, or who they have to bribe in order to get his ass back in the Contiguous United States just after three in the morning, but somehow they manage it. 

Patrick’s been hanging out in his apartment, checking his phone constantly, waiting for somebody from the front office to let him know what’s going on and what they’re going to do. Lauren Peterson calls him when Johnny’s flight touches down and tells him to get to the UC ASAP. She apologizes immediately afterwards for how she sounds, but Patrick hardly even noticed. 

His first thought when he sees Johnny in a t-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops is that he looks good despite his obvious exhaustion and the sweat he must have built up just being outside in the insane heat. He’d put on some of the weight he lost in the post-season and his skin was no longer bluish-pale like it was at the end there. 

“Did Lindsey come back with you?” Patrick asks. 

“Nah, she said she’d stay. We still have the place were renting for another two weeks, so if I can make it back out there, I will.” 

“Rough,” Patrick says, thinking of Amanda. She drove him to the airport, amused and in good humor, unlike Patrick who had sat in silence trying to understand how it was that everybody was so convinced he was completely and totally hard up over Jonathan Toews of all people. There were players Patrick could see being gay for in the NHL--Laich, Lundqvist, Sharpy, hell, he’d seen enough of Seg’s ass running around Biel to know that was a butt that didn’t quit--Johnny did not come to mind. 

“They’re waiting for you through there,” Lauren says from her desk, phone glued to her ear, gesturing expansively at a conference room. 

Stan Bowman, Q, John McDonough and a suited guy Patrick doesn’t recognize are already waiting inside. They go through the usual round of pleasantries and when Scott Kempenaar and Adam Rogowin show up a few minutes later, they tell Johnny and Patrick to sit down. 

“Adam, you better tell ‘em what’s up,” McDonough says, sitting back in his chair. 

“First of all, I want to thank you for waiting to talk to the press. This is a difficult and confusing time, especially for you,” Rogowin says, hands braced behind his back like he’s come to tell them there’s been a death in the family, “Andy Highmore has been in the hospital for two days. As of now, his condition is listed as critical. We’ve issued a statement and we’ve spoken to his family to assert our support for them and express our deep regret for what happened.” 

“That’s...good?” Johnny says tentatively, sharing a look with Patrick, “I assume there’s a way that you’d like to handle the...um...the rumors?” 

Rogowin pauses audibly, looking at McDonough, who nods. He swallows before continuing, face looking ever more grave. “Yes, we have a strategy in mind. What I’m going to ask you to do is deeply unorthodox.” 

*

They want Patrick and Johnny to pretend to be gay. To pretend that the whole freaking thing is real. That they’ve been in love since they were rookies and that they’ve been dating since the Olympics in 2010. All to offset the negative press following Andy Highmore’s beating and hospitalization. It turned out the unrecognizable suit guy was a lawyer from Covington & Burling with a stack of about 52 contracts, including an NDA, to sign if they agreed. 

“And why would we agree?” Patrick asks Johnny, seated at a booth in the Golden Apple diner at 5 AM with a stack of blueberry pancakes, waffles with whip cream and strawberries, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, and wheat toast split between them. “It’s crazy--you can’t pretend to do shit like that! What am I going to say to Amanda? What am I going to say to my parents? What am I going to say to whoever I want to get married to? Shit like this will ruin my sexual history for life.” 

Johnny shrugs, glumly, taking another big bite of waffle. “I don’t know what you’re fighting me for, I’m not arguing with you.” 

There’s a TV over the counter that’s set to CNN. Mostly it’s been about Snowden, and Egypt, and Valley Fever, but all of a sudden the news anchor says, “In a surprise turn of events, only weeks after the Chicago Blackhawks took home the Stanley cup, it has come out, in the wake of high school student Andy Highmore’s beating, that two of the Hawk’s players, may in fact, be in a relationship with each other. The hockey stars, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, have yet to comment on the story or even Andy Highmore’s assault and resulting hospitalization, but Blackhawk’s General Manager, Stan Bowman, has expressed on behalf of the team deep sympathy and remorse that any of their fans could do such a thing.” 

Patrick cuts his piece of pancake a little too viciously and it goes flying off his plate to Johnny’s side of the table. Johnny spears it with his fork, looks at it and then shrugs, before taking a bite. 

On the television they’ve switched to footage of Bowman’s press conference and then to an interview with Brian Burke. 

“While I find it incredibly shameful that Perez Hilton is still taking part in outing celebrities and I do absolutely believe that Toews and Kane’s right to privacy should be respected, I also feel that, in this changing world, now is the time for them to stand up and be counted. To let everybody else who is afraid, who has heard ‘we don’t want you,’ who feels ‘I will never be good for the way I love and the people I love’--that you can win a Stanley cup, and an Olympic Gold medal, and that ultimately, the only person stopping you, is you.” 

Patrick pauses in the middle of chewing, mouth suddenly dry. 

It flips back to the anchor then who says, “There’s been a tremendous outpouring of support, from Kanye West, originally a Chicago native, who took to twitter to comment ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’ and the hashtag toewsxkane, to congressman Mark Pocan, an openly gay Democrat from Wisconsin, to the people of Chicago themselves.” 

There’s a series of clips of little children who proudly wear their jerseys, gay teens who assert they’ve loved the both of them for forever and are just so floored to know that there is space for them in the world of professional sports, not just ‘some day’ but now. 

It actually makes Patrick’s eyes prickle and when he finally looks away from the screen and sees Johnny’s face, his firmed jaw and determined eyes, he already knows what comes next. 

He puts down his knife and fork, meets Johnny’s eyes and says, “Oh god, we’re going to agree.” 

*

After that, everything happens incredibly fast. They sign and initial a billion documents detailing exactly how they can speak about their fake homosexual relationship, about their sexuality (which they will claim before god and country is ‘fluid’), about the tenure of said relationship (six months, upon which time they will be allowed to publicly end their relationship and go on to sleep with whomever they please), where they will live (still separately, but suit guy had to be argued down), how they will room on the road (also, separate, because no coach in his right mind would allow two players who were actually dating to sleep together during away games), and finally a draconian NDA that will ensure they will never be able to speak to anybody about the truth. 

Q told them about fifty times there was no reason, for the love of god, to go through with any of this. But Patrick’s been scrolling through his twitter feed, and perversely every asshole calling him a fag just convinces him that much more that he’s doing the right thing. 

It’s only afterwards when they’ve finally been left alone that Johnny says, “I guess I won’t be able to go back to Hawaii now,” and Patrick realizes neither of them has spoken to Lindsey or Amanda about exactly where they fit into this.

Patrick’s had about a billion calls from his mother that he’s dismissed, 46 texts from his sisters put together, and another 13 messages from various past and present Blackhawks that mostly consist of capslock “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA” until the character limit. 

Patrick eyes Johnny pacing back and forth, cell up to his ear, while he explains the situation to his parents, as another message rolls in, this time from Amanda, with a simple “<3” and wonders how the hell they’re going to pull this off. 

*  
He waits to get home to tell her. 

She takes it well, definitely better than he deserves, especially after he left her behind only two months into their relationship to go play in Switzerland. After his fifth attempt at an apology over the phone, she interrupts him “Pat, shut up, this is bigger than you.” 

“What?” he asks, astonished, collapsing onto his bed. 

“This is about making a difference,” she points out. “It’s only six months, we can cook up some crazy story that I was your beard before and now we’re just awesome friends, and then when it’s all over you can say that you actually fell in love with me in the process of pretending to be in a relationship with me. It’ll be kind of hilariously meta.” 

“You’re crazy, you know that? You should be breaking up with me right now and calling me a crazy person and a dickhead and burning my house down,” he tells her. 

“Yes well, I’ve just gotten you trained up so that the sex is really good. It would be a shame to waste all that effort.” 

He laughs with her and smiles and is just, in spite of everything, really glad of his life right now. 

Two hours later Johnny shows up at his apartment, forlorn, baseball cap and sunglasses on even though it’s still dark out. As if that doesn’t make you more noticeable as a celebrity than less. 

“Some old lady on the elevator just asked me to give a kiss to my boyfriend for her,” he says by way of introduction. 

A part of Patrick wants to laugh while the other part wants to curl up in his shower and just drown himself in it, but the vaguely confused and distraught expression on Johnny’s face is more pressing than any feelings he has on oldsters and their apparent mastery of the internet. 

“What’s up?” he says, backing away from the door so that Johnny can step inside. 

Johnny sighs and Patrick knows exactly what happened without being told. Lindsey broke up with him. Simple as that. 

“Have you eaten?” Patrick asks. 

Johnny shrugs. “Wasn’t really feeling it.” 

Patrick couldn’t bring himself to watch tv, or read, or play video games. It allowed for too much time in his head--too much time to want to run back to the lawyers and demand that they burn up all those contracts. They’re doing the right thing, he knows this, but the panic won’t quite ebb. Until the doorbell rang he’d been elbows deep in crimini mushrooms, blasting music and singing along nearly hysterically. He leads Johnny back to the kitchen and sets him up with a beer before going back to chopping. 

He figures if he just doesn’t comment on it, Johnny won’t either. 

No such luck. After a moment of shocked silence, Johnny goes over to his knife block and pulls a $120 Wusthoff chef’s knife from it, staring at it in unalloyed wonder. 

“Kaner, what?” he says, holding it flat across his palm like he’s not entirely certain what it’s purpose is. “You used to boil eggs into rock.”

Kaner shrugs and keeps chopping the mushrooms. “You know my mom can’t cook man.” 

“That explains exactly nothing,” Johnny says, before sliding the knife back into the block. It’s a good one, a horizontal one, so that the weight of the blade is never resting on the cutting edge. Nevertheless, he watches Johnny to make sure he doesn’t saw the blade into the wood accidentally. He likes that knife. He bought it right after the lockout ended. 

“When we were in Switzerland, it was adapt or die,” he says with a sigh, sweeping the pile of mushrooms into a ramekin for later use. He’s a big fan of mise en place when he’s cooking. 

He knows the way he took to cooking goes beyond the ordinary conception of ‘adapt.’ His sisters for example can make perfectly serviceable pastas, and chicken breasts, and salads. Nothing to write to Michelin about, but nobody was going to complain about their lack of gustatory prowess. Patrick knows the place where he’s at is way beyond that. There’s a reason he took such pains to hide it from the guys. To hide it from Johnny. 

Johnny must see something in his face, something that Patrick is trying very hard to hide, because he lets it go. “Can I help?” he asks. 

“You can sit there,” Patrick says, pointing at one of the stools set up at his kitchen counter. The last thing he wants is help. Amanda and his sisters always offer, and while he’s perfectly happy to have them in the kitchen to keep him company, the only thing they’re allowed to do to “help” is scrub dishes. 

“What are you making?” Johnny asks, when he’s settled himself in a chair after grabbing a beer from Patrick’s fridge. 

Patrick starts roughly chopping thyme and oregano together, enjoying the pungent smell that rises from the bruised greens. “Mushroom ragout and polenta.”

Johnny doesn’t say anything, although Patrick’s sure he wants to. 

“So what’s up, man?” Patrick asks again. “You regretting this decision?” 

Johnny drops his head into his hands. “I think the worst is that she told me she understood _why_ I was going ahead with it and she still told me it was over. I think I would’ve preferred her to start screaming her head off. That I could deal with. There’d be some vindication about it. That she obviously didn’t get what it’s like to be in this position, and I could just be mad about that.” 

Patrick nods and Johnny continues, “But that’s how great she is, she does get it, and that’s exactly why it has to be over.” 

He sounds very reasonable. Patrick figures he had to have been practicing all evening, trying to get himself to place where he actually believed it. 

But Johnny takes a sip of his beer and looks so fucking forlorn Patrick actually has to turn away to dice the tomatoes. This whole thing fucking sucks. When he turns back, Johnny’s started to peel the label of his beer bottle and he says “Ugh, I’m not going to get laid once in the next six months.” 

Patrick winces. It’s not like they’ll really be able to sell this nonsense if Johnny is off hooking up at every bar all the time. It might not be so bad if they were into the season by now, he’d probably be too tired and too focused to care much about getting himself some, but they’ve got nearly three months of emptiness rising up above them. Three months of having to seriously convince the world they’re in love with each other, so it’s not like they can hare off to different ends of the globe. 

“What’s the longest you’ve gone since you first started having sex?” Patrick asks, clattering around with a skillet so that he can start browning some butter to saute the onions in. 

Johnny thinks about it, twirling the beer bottle on the countertop. “Six weeks? Around the olympics? I wasn’t getting any then.” 

“Oho, god,” Patrick says, unable to contain a laugh, “you’re in so much fucking trouble.” 

“Shit, man, I know,” Johnny says with a groan. 

Later, sitting on Patrick’s couch, eating Polenta and watching the White Sox fall apart against the Cubs in the 8th inning, Johnny gestures to Patrick with his fork and says, “This is really good.” 

Patrick takes another sip of his wine. Johnny’d actually suggested the pairing - a strong California red that somebody had given to Patrick a while ago - it’s good, just a little spice that goes well with the flavorful mushrooms. Who knew either of them would ever have any clue about shit like this? When Patrick first met Johnny he’d refuse to eat anything spicy, even salsa con queso was too hot, and Patrick, by contrast, wanted to put cheese wizz on everything and eat Lunchables all the time. 

“Thanks,” he says, after a long moment, wincing as Soriano homers, “you want some more?” 

Johnny just laughs. Neither of them feel much allegiance to either the Cubs or the Sox, but Johnny roots for the Cubs when a game is on, just to be a contrary asshole. Now that the Giants are totally in the tank, he’ll probably go out and buy all San Francisco gear. 

“You’re a bad human being,” Patrick says, picking up Johnny’s plate to get him more polenta. 

“But the internet says you love me anyway,” Johnny replies with a laugh, before immediately looking pensive about it. 

Patrick pauses, plates balancing in his hands, wine glass tucked against his body. “Johnny, what?” 

“I dunno, man, I used to just think we acted like normal...it’s a little rough to have everything thrown up there as evidence of our grand love affair.” 

“Like?” Patrick asks, drawing the word out. 

“Like...every celly and every comment we’ve ever made is being analyzed. People are even looking at the popsicle eating contest.” 

“The popsicle eating contest? From like, three years ago?” Patrick replies blankly. “I don’t get it. How would that be evidence of us...uh...getting busy?”

“I don’t know,” Johnny replies. “I don’t see what they see.” 

“Maybe we have to institute a no looking at the internet rule,” Patrick replies. 

Johnny shrugs. 

*

The Blackhawks PR department spends about forty hours strategizing how exactly they’re going to confirm the rumors are true. They suggest a press conference first, which Patrick vetoes, remembering the last time he had to give one of those and none too fondly. 

They suggest leaking some kind of suggestive photos, but Patrick has valiantly tried to keep the days of his hookups appearing on the internet behind him and the thought of having to pose for some artfully fake paparazzi shots obviously makes Johnny uncomfortable. 

Finally, Rogowin conference calls them both and says, “What about a letter?”

“A letter?” Johnny asks at the other end of the line. 

“Like Jason Collins,” Rogowin says. 

Patrick thinks about it. The whole way Collins handled that was pretty classy. He remembered reading the letter in SI and thinking the guy had brass nuts. “That...could work?” 

Johnny doesn’t say anything. 

“It was masterfully done,” Rogowin says, bowling onwards. “I’m not sure it would be necessary to write something so long or as personal, especially since his letter came first, and yours would be sort of a postscript, as the second and third athletes to come out in a major sport.” 

Patrick puts his head in his hands. Well, that feels a little shitty, claiming a status he doesn’t have. He’s glad they’re doing this over the phone, so they can’t see his face. “We’re not gay,” he finally says, voice rusty, hoping they’ll understand what he means. 

“Right, right, we’ll make sure it’s very clear that you’re not coming out as one way or the other, just being honest about this…” Rogowin pauses and then clears his throat, “relationship you have.” 

Johnny still hasn’t said anything, and Patrick’s not even really sure what he’s hearing anymore. Rogowin is talking about having some drafts drawn up over the next few days so they can sign off on them. He can’t deal with this. He really can’t. This is his entire history of his life they’re altering for the sake of a publicity stunt. 

And then Johnny breaks in. “I’ll write it.” 

Patrick stares at the phone, wondering what the hell Johnny is thinking right now. What his face looks like. 

“Oh,” Rogowin says, temporarily thrown off balance. 

“I’ll let you see it first,” Johnny says in a tone that says none of this is up for negotiation, “and obviously you too, Patrick.” 

Patrick rubs at his face, relieved that he doesn’t have to deal with it and ashamed for being afraid. 

When he hangs up he spends four hours in the kitchen. He has to improvise. He doesn’t have the ingredients for any of his more complicated recipes. But he settles on an arrabiata recipe by Ina Garten, and then decides to make the pasta by hand. By the time he’s done, his knees ache from so many hours of continuous standing, his kitchen is a mess, and he’s not sure how he’ll ever get the persistent stench of garlic and tomatoes out of his clothes. 

*

The next two days pass relatively uneventful. He spends a lot of time on the phone with Amanda, watches porn - straight porn to be exact, and working out. He drops far too much money on groceries at the French Market. He’ll probably have to host about seven dinner parties to possibly use all of it, but it takes his mind off of it. He hasn’t really been spending time in human company, so the possibility of entertaining, even if he’ll have to explain, yes, he made all of this shit himself, is starting to look really attractive. 

On Thursday, Erica calls him again. “I just saw Johnny’s letter to GQ.” 

“Oh, yeah...that,” Patrick says vaguely. 

Erica starts to say something and then stops. 

“What is it?”

She sighs. “So I know this is fake and all, but did Johnny actually write this?” 

Patrick laughs. “Yeah, he wouldn’t let anybody help him. I haven’t read it yet. Is it terrible?”

Erica laughs with him, but there’s an odd inflection to it. He’s not sure what that means. “No, it’s definitely not terrible. You should check it out.”

Patrick sighs and goes to his laptop and searches for Jonathan Toews and GQ. It comes up as the first hit. 

_You complete me. A worn-out phrase everybody knows from Jerry McGuire. Until I turned 19, those were just some words Tom Cruise said to Renee Zelweger. They didn't mean anything. As far as I could envision, they would never mean anything._

Patrick nearly has to stop right there, he’s trying too hard not to laugh. Is he serious? Jerry McGuire? He considers clicking away, unsure he can take the second-hand embarrassment of Jonathan Toews waxing lyrical about how much he loves Patrick with _Jerry McGuire_ as the vehicle for such a pronouncement. Only Johnny, seriously. 

He scrolls the page down. 

_I had been peripherally aware of Patrick Kane since I was a kid, played with him in some tournaments, played against him on international ice. Obviously, I noticed when he went number 1 to the same team that drafted me. But it's so funny to look back on that first prospect camp we had together with the benefit of hindsight, and realize how a single person can change your life._

_Part of me has never accepted that. I was a person who played good hockey before Patrick Kane. An individual in my own right. I imagine if one of us ever leaves Chicago, I will become an individual again.  
But now, in this moment, sitting in front of my laptop, typing this thing out, the thought of it is inconceivable. I cannot imagine ever being the same player without him. Ever being capable of the things we accomplished. That terrifies me. _

Patrick swallows. Well that much is true for the both of them. He’s got to give Johnny credit for trying to keep this as truthful as possible. He’s sure Rogowin would’ve come up with some grand story of how they missed each other so much during the Olympics, they took that cab ride together and professed a deep profound and undying love for each other. In reality, he’d spent that cab ride listening to music while Johnny texted some girl he’d been banging back home. 

_I agonized over how to say this. How to explain to the world who we are and why we hid. But the thing is, I've realized none of that really matters. You love who you love. I wish that neither of us had ever felt the need to hide._

_A lot of people have asked me recently, "are you gay?" I don't know how to answer that. Once upon a time the word filled me with dread. But the answer is very simple, I love a man. That can mean whatever you want it to mean. It doesn't matter to me how you feel about it. I don't have to define it._

_All I can say is, when I hit that ice in 2007 at prospect camp, every single part of me already knew what it took me a long time to admit. Patrick Kane was made for me._

_So yes. In short. The rumors are true._

He shuts his laptop and calls Amanda up. “Have you read it?” he asks, before she even says hello.

“Oh, hey to you too,” she replies, teasing, “yeah I read it. Johnny is one smooth talker. I can’t believe he wrote that himself.” 

“The Jerry McGuire line, fuck, the guys are never going to let me live this down,” he moans, wanting to hit his head on something. Perhaps several somethings. 

She cackles at him. He’s pretty sure his girlfriend is not supposed to be taking so much delight in his fake relationship. 

*


	6. Prequel to "You Help Me Lose My Mind" (May 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I asked for prompts for Gay Porn Hard and somebody asked me for Patrick and Jonny’s first time in [“You Help Me Lose My Mind.”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/857243) This takes place during the 2011-2012 season.

Patrick tries it once. He tries it because he’s sick in love with Jonny, every long second of every passing day. He tries it because maybe, just maybe, if he scratches that itch, he’ll stop wanting something he can’t have. It takes him six dashed back shots of tequila to even work up the courage to let this guy take him home. And once they’re there, he can’t even keep it up, knocked flat and kept soft by 40% ABV.

He doesn’t know how he gets out of there. But the sick he wakes up with the next day isn’t even this virulent love he has for Jonny, it isn’t the pounding spinning nausea of a hangover, it’s the sick of scared desperation.

And so it continues. He gets drunk a lot. And nobody even seems to notice that it isn’t his usual intoxicated jollity, it’s a sharp-edged sad drunkenness that’s ever ready to slide into anger.

After a shootout loss on their own ice to Colorado, he overdoes it. Winds up with jello limbs and tilting on a sloshing floor.

“C’mon, Kaner, you’re done,” Jonny tells him. He gathers him up with firm hands and takes him home.

In the car, head listing back against the seat, the cool air from the window Jonny rolls down sliding over his skin, he says, unexpected and yet inexorable, “I tried it, god, I tried it.”

“Hmm?” Jonny says over the soft hum of his stupid country music.

“To get fucked,” Patrick replies. “I tried to get fucked.”

Jonny’s tone doesn’t change. He doesn’t look startled or horrified. But his fists tighten up on the steering wheel, distended veins raised up across the backs of his hands. “You tried?”

Patrick laughs without mirth. He laughs until he’s choking with it. “Did not succeed,” he explains, sinking low in his seat, still chuckling.

He thinks, the pit of his stomach expanding from fear, blood alcohol no match for the rush of adrenaline that his brain pushes through his veins, ‘he wasn’t you.’ He could say it out loud. He could tell Jonny everything. It wouldn’t be so bad to be rejected. He would survive. You couldn’t always get what you want. Nobody ever died from that.

The urge beats in his heart, rushing up his throat, trying to get free, but something stoppers his mouth closed, and all that happens that night is that Jonny puts him to bed with a glass of water on his nightstand and a wastebasket next to the mattress.

Patrick scores the only goal in a shootout win against the Panthers and afterwards, the team grabs a late bite at a Cuban place not too far from their hotel in downtown Miami. He thinks about ordering a beer, but ends up sticking to club soda. He gets too honest when he’s drunk. And he’s happy, glad of the win. Glad of the goal. No telling what he would give away that he couldn’t easily get back.

“What’s that about?” Stålberg asks him when the waitress sets the sparkling water down.

Patrick shrugs, swallows the ‘what’s it to you’ that threatens to burst out. Jonny seems to note his discomfort and smoothly changes the subject. The happiness slowly evaporates inside him. He feels it go and wonders what the hell is wrong with him. Scoring in that shootout even when Jonny couldn’t. Ordinarily, he loves getting one over on him in this rubber-band push pull that’s existed between them since camp in 2007. It doesn’t happen on the ice very often. Hard for the two of them, they know each other’s play too well. In practice, on the rare occasions when Jonny’s put in a red jersey and Kaner’s in black, he thinks all they do is cancel each other out. An endless battle of keepaway. Sometimes, after trying to out stick-handle each other he’ll walk off the ice hard enough to pound nails.

The gnawing crawling sensation of unhappiness widens within him.

He stays a few steps behind on the walk back to the hotel. After a while Jonny slows his pace, dropping back from the guys to walk beside him. He doesn’t ask what’s up. He doesn’t talk about the game. He stays silent. And even though it’s what Patrick wants, unable to imagine putting a conversation together right now, it’s strangely disconcerting. He’s so keenly aware of everything he feels. How much of it there is. And how little it matters if the person he wants doesn’t want him back.

They fall far enough behind that everybody has disappeared back to their rooms by the time they reach the lobby. It’s late enough that there’s only Patrick and Jonny in the 'up' elevator. Once they’ve cleared the second floor, panel blinking through numbers, Jonny moves in close and frames Patrick’s face with his hands.

“Tell me no,” he says, staring down at him with burning eyes.

Patrick smiles, fierce and bright. “Those doors could open at any moment.”

Jonny thrusts him back against the padded wall, wrapping Patrick’s silk tie around his fist and using it to tug Patrick straight up into his mouth. Patrick expects bruising pressure. He expects Jonny’s teeth. He does not expect the way Jonny pauses, mouth hovering over Patrick’s, their noses brushing together. Patrick’s skin tingles, warmth rushing through him as his brain translates the space between them into an actual sensation. Jonny finally closes the gap between them, kiss soft and perfect, tongue skating along the seam of Patrick’s lips and dipping just inside. It’s unhurried, the slow slide of his tongue, meeting Patrick’s, deftly exploring his mouth. Patrick’s lids flutter open, Jonny’s shut eyes blurring before him. It’s better than he could’ve imagined.

Jonny steps away and moves to the other half of the elevator a few floors before the doors open. He seems unmoved, so frighteningly normal, Patrick wonders if it was some test or practical joke. And yet when Patrick stares at him, Jonny smiles warmly back.

Fuck.

Patrick is stone cold sober. He doesn’t have a bottle of Jack to give him the courage to do this. But once they’re shut up in their room, Patrick gives up and gives in. He pulls Jonny to him, falling back on his bed and taking Jonny with him. Jonny breathes deep and then he’s on Patrick, fucking his mouth deep with his tongue, making that kiss in the elevator look like a parodic farce, child’s play.

“I want you to try it with me,” Jonny says, kissing a burning trail over his throat, unbuttoning Patrick’s shirt as he goes.

“Try what?” Patrick blinks up at him as he weighs the pros and cons of getting Jonny to undress. There would be all of this naked skin, finally his to touch. But it would also bring a halt to the way Jonny’s moving their hips together.

“Getting fucked,” Jonny says. For somebody who swears as much as he does, on the ice and off it, the word seems vulgar and unwieldy in his mouth in this context. Like a kid trying it out for the first time.

Patrick laughs. He laughs and laughs, he waits for Jonny to get angry at him, still so bad at accepting teasing. Jonny sits back, weight resting over Patrick’s hips and waits him out. When Patrick’s chuckles start to die down, Jonny rocks back on him, pressing down on Patrick’s dick. “You gonna lie to me about this one?”

“I’m not a fucking charity case,” Patrick spits back. It’s no longer funny, whatever the hell Jonny is playing at.

Jonny stares down at him, eyes hooded, expression dangerous. “You think I’m doing this because I feel sorry for you?”

He tugs on the two halves of Patrick’s shirt, popping off the remaining buttons as it separates, and bends his head to latch onto on Patrick’s left nipple. He teases it, tonguing it to a stiff peak, raising up on his knees a little so that when Patrick tries, unbidden and unconscious, to get more pressure on his dick, there’s only air between them.

Jonny does this until his nipple hurts, until Patrick’s back is bowed in an athletic arch, until he’s gasping raw and wet. And then Jonny moves to the other one.

Patrick can’t take it. He reaches between them, trails delicate, soft fingers along the front of Jonny’s trousers, finding the heated line of his dick. He keeps the touch light, unthreatening, ostensibly innocent, tracing down over it until he gets to the gentle swell of the head, and then he rubs, spread-fingered, pushing Jonny’s dick back into his own thigh. Jonny freezes, muscles trembling, knees braced on either side of Patrick’s hips. The hands that he was running up and down over Patrick’s ribs still.

“Don’t fucking play with me here,” Patrick growls.

Jonny’s eyes drift shut, Patrick stares up into his face, watching a flush spread over his cheeks as Patrick rubs harder with the heel of his palm. Jonny’s unbelievably sexy like this and so goddamned compelling. Sometimes, looking at him, Patrick feels a very real pain knife through him.

Jonny slaps his hand away after a long moment. “That’s enough.”

He gets off the bed, rummages around in the black case of his toiletries and comes up with lube. Patrick watches him from his lazy sprawl on top of the covers, clothes still half on as he searches out condoms in Patrick’s bag. And the fear returns. It stays with him while he watches Jonny shuck his suit off, it stays with him when he’s pulling off the remains of his own clothes, it stays with him as Jonny kneels on the bed between his thighs.

Jonny pours lube into his palm, it comes out of the bottle faster than he expected, spilling between his fingers and down over his knuckles. The sight makes Patrick bite at his lower lip. Jonny catches him, he closes his eyes and exhales out through his nose. What’s that about, Patrick wonders.

The first finger doesn’t slide in easy. Patrick’s turned on, his dick, upright against his belly, attests to that, but he’s tense. Shivery with nerves. Jonny’s only got his fingertip inside, and slicked up though it is, any further and he’s going to have to force it. Jonny bends over him, mouth closing over his nipple again, tongue swirling around and around, making Patrick curse when he moves off to press kisses between his pectorals. He drags just the very tip of his tongue over Patrick’s chest, licking his way to the other nipple, tongue flickering over it. Patrick’s balls tighten.

“So fucking pretty, Peeks,” Jonny breathes, “your pink nipples. Just the color of your mouth. Always see them through your shirt.”

He realizes, suddenly, when Jonny tugs at one with his teeth that there are two fingers inside of him, moving swift and sure in and out of him. It surprises him so much that he clamps down hard around them and makes Jonny grunt and swear.

Patrick pictures Jonny’s cock inside him then, breaching him, thrust in deep. He pictures clamping down around him and making Jonny curse like that and he shudders, twisting under Jonny’s ministrations.

Jonny pulls his fingers free after the third slides in easy. Patrick feels the loss, wanting the width of Jonny’s cock to stretch him open. It’s a sharp contrast to the last time he attempted this, where he had felt so completely and utterly unable to stomach it, he’d had to leave at a run. It doesn’t bear thinking about, so he pushes that thought away, focuses on the way Jonny parts his thighs and comes to rest between them.

He gasps, ragged and caught, like he’s coming up for air, when Jonny pushes in, forcing Patrick’s knees back to his chest so he can get in close. Even through the latex of the condom, Patrick feels the heat of him.

When Jonny starts to fuck him, it’s merciless. Just as Patrick would’ve expected—hard thrusts with all the power of his famed thighs behind them, driving deep into Patrick, so deep he expects to feel it in his heart.

Jonny apologizes when he punches a particularly loud cry out of Patrick’s mouth, “Sorry, sorry, I’m losing it here.”

Patrick doesn’t care. If Jonny isn’t doing this for Patrick, well, Patrick isn’t doing it for Jonny. Bent the way he is, there’s enough space that he can get his fist around his dick, and he could work himself to orgasm pretty quick this way, stretch in his ass a perfect overwhelming counterpoint.

He needs Jonny to come first though. He wants him to be destroyed. He wants to be the best fucking lay of his life. He wants to leave a lasting burning impression on Jonny’s mind. He wants that much if he can’t have everything else. So he holds off, fisting himself slow, palm lingering at the head, thumbing the slit good, but with minimal pressure. A tease, not enough to set him over the edge, but enough to keep him along side it. Patrick clenches down occasionally, arrhythmic and unpredictable. Jonny fucking whimpers every time he does it—this broken uninhibited sound seemingly forced out of him.

“Can’t anymore,” Jonny says after a few minutes of this. Patrick’s relieved, because sometimes when he tightens around Jonny, it forces his cockhead up against something really fucking good inside and then Patrick’s plan to keep from coming starts to get a little shaky.

Jonny comes moments later, shoved in deep, forehead dropped to Patrick’s shoulder, fingers digging deep into Patrick’s thighs. It takes a while, Jonny shuddering between his legs, emptying himself into Patrick’s body. But after a static pause, he starts to pull out.

“Don’t fucking move,” Patrick says and speeds his hand up on his cock, jerking himself off for real now. Jonny stops as ordered, although Patrick can see from the expression on his face that it costs him. He’s still hard inside Patrick though, and Patrick isn’t ready to give that up. It doesn’t take much, especially when Jonny starts to mouth at his nipples again. They’re so over-sensitized they seem to burn. That’s the end. He comes hard, pretzeled under Jonny’s weight, shooting stripes up his own chest.

Jonny cries out when Patrick’s muscles involuntarily ripple around his dick from the force of his orgasm. His hitching dragged-over-glass breaths sound almost like crying.

“Oh god,” he says, before his arms give out and he collapses down on Patrick. Recovery has always been one of Jonny’s strong suits, so he doesn’t remain for long, finally withdrawing from Patrick’s body.

Patrick can at last drop his legs back to the bed. His bloodstream is overloaded with endorphins, like he just came four times rather than once. It takes some doing to make his limbs work so he can drag himself from the bed, but once he does, he heads to the shower because he needs the space.

The inside of his head is a weird jumbled place. He can’t figure out how or why that happened. He’s pretty sure it should never happen again. He and Jonny are on totally different playing fields with this one. What Jonny’s getting out of it, he doesn’t know. But Patrick doesn’t want it to stop. The debilitated, incurably sick-with-love part of him is already planning a next time.

And that is how it starts.


	7. Lending A Helping Hand (July 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt of surprise orgasms. So, I don’t uh…think this counts, but I tried? Warnings for accidental drug use and SWI.

Patrick is going to kill Bur—he’s going to beat him to death with his own stick. Or drown him in the showers. Or maybe, run him over with the Hummer. Because this is all his fault. ALL HIS FAULT.

He realizes distantly he’s having a bad trip. That’s what this is. But, he’s never been high before. He’s never been drug tested either, but that’s beside the point. Just, how the hell do people do this? It’s the worst. He feels like he’s gonna die. Like the ceiling is gonna drop on him or his heart is gonna explode. Everybody at this party is judging him. He can feel it. Their incredulous stares as he not-so-spectacularly loses his shit.

Tazer had tried to stop him. “You don’t want those,” he’d said with a laugh, when Patrick’s hand was hovering over the brownies. “They’re edibles.”

Patrick hadn’t put it together. No shit, brownies were edible. Jonny had watched him eyebrows raised as he’d scoffed and took a big bite out of the corner.

"What?" he’d said, because it was delicious, rich with pecans and fudge. "You don’t want any?"

Jonny had held a hand up in front of his face, warding him off, like Patrick was just gonna shove one in his mouth. “No, no, really, that’s okay.”

"What’s wrong with you?" Patrick had asked, taking another huge bite. It was crispy on the edges, and gooey in the center, just the way he liked. He really shouldn’t have a second one, but they’d played their hearts out today and these brownies were so good.

Jonny had shrugged and shook his head, a laugh at the edge of his voice. “I don’t need to be getting high, wild man.”

"What?" The brownie had caught in his throat. What had formerly seemed like not enough, now felt like a tremendous wad lodged in his esophagus.

Jonny had blinked at him. “It’s a pot brownie, Kaner.”

"Oh, fuck!" he’d ran to the sink and spit out the last of it. Jonny had watched him eyes wide.

"You didn’t know?" he asked. "That’s what ‘edibles’ fuckin’ means, moron."

"Why the hell are their pot brownies at this party!" Patrick had shouted, plaintive, the beginnings of a panic attack setting in. "What the fuck kinda people does Bur know?"

Jonny had laughed then. “Normal people.”

"What the fuck am I gonna do?" Patrick had asked, filled with terror. "Oh god, oh god, I’m gonna…I’m gonna be drug tested. And then kicked out of the NHL and this shit stays in your system for months. I learned that in school. Didn’t you learn that in school? What the fuck am I gonna do? It was accidental. I didn’t mean it. At least I can’t be deported, but I…just made it." He’d stopped to breathe and then realized the true horror the statement. "I just made it here. And to lose it over some goddamn brownies after being so good about that shit. Tazer, what the hell am I gonna do?"

"Whoa," Jonny had said, putting his beer down. "Whoa, it’s gonna be okay. You need to relax, it’s gonna go worse for you if you don’t relax."

Which brings them to now, Patrick pacing back and forth in their shared hotel room, breathing hard, heart racing at 3 AM, two hours after they left the party. Jonny lies on his bed, arm over his eyes, as Patrick treads in a circuit in front of the TV. “You gotta stop, man, you’re driving me nuts. I need to sleep.”

"I’m driving YOU nuts?" Patrick asks, "My career is over, because of Bur’s fuckin’ druggie friends. What the hell kinda people just leave that shit laying around?"

Jonny sighs. “You know you’re gonna be fine. Just like…take a minute to breathe, calm down. It’s gonna pass. It’s just a little pot. The NHL isn’t the FBI.”

"I can’t, Jonny," Patrick replies, voice thick with unshed frustrated tears as he slumps back against the wall. "I can’t."

Jonny sighs, peering up at Patrick from under his arm. After a moment, he clears his throat, the way he does when he’s got an idea that Patrick’s not gonna like. “Maybe jerking it would help,” he waves a hand in front of Patrick, “like, take the edge off.”

Patrick glares at him. “Are you kidding me? How the fuck am I gonna get hard like this?” What the hell kind of idea is that?

Jonny blows out a frustrated breath and rolls out of bed, clearly giving up on the sleep notion. “Jesus H,” he says, tugging Patrick away from the wall none too gently.

"What!?" Patrick asks, scandalized. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Taking care of business," Jonny replies, voice grim. He pulls Patrick’s back to his chest and shoves his sweatpants down with a business-like hand. Patrick doesn’t even understand what’s happening right now, or what the fuck brought him to this moment, leaning back against Jonny’s chest as he watches him take Patrick’s dick in his hand. It’s surreal, Jonny’s darker skin against Patrick’s, his arm braced against Patrick’s hip.

“Not gonna be able to get hard, man,” he whispers.

Jonny laughs. “Wanna bet?”

He gives Patrick an experimental pull, and Patrick watches, shocked, as he firms up right there, his heart still pounding like he just ran across the tracks only milliseconds before the train passed through. Arousal and fear are not exactly far apart, but Patrick really isn’t sure he likes the combination. Especially, since that’s Jonny, Jonny his linemate, Jonny short for Jonathan, not like, fuckin’ Johanna or something, with his hand on his dick.

He starts off a slow rhythm, and it occurs to Patrick then that he’s got his ass to Jonny’s dick, which, whoa, that is so not okay. This is bad enough already, but Patrick doesn’t want Jonny’s dick, soft or not, anywhere near his butt. That’s gonna stay with him forever. He goes to turn in Jonny’s arms, but Jonny cages him in with his body.

“Quit it, asswipe,” he says, fingers a tight circle around his semi. “We’re not doing it face to face. That’s fuckin’ gay.”

Easy for Jonny to say. He’s not the one with a dick nudging between his cheeks. It’s still not erect, which, okay, small favors, if Jonny were getting off on jerking Patrick off, they would have a serious, serious problem, but Patrick still feels the bulge of it against his backside. Jonny’s taller so it’s high up on the crease, not poking or anything, but Patrick is still unbearably aware of it.

He knows he’s shivering hard, trying not to imagine all the ways his life is over, all the ways this is so wrong, or how they may be ruining everything with this stupid plan. Because he’s out of ideas, the adrenaline rush of paranoid horror is never ending. They’re alone in this room, and he feels like there are people watching, unseen eyes. It makes his skin crawl.

“C’mon, man,” Jonny says, into his ear, lips accidentally grazing Patrick’s ear, and of course that’s what gets Patrick to stiffen up fully in Jonny’s grip. Jonny blows out a breath and starts jerking it in earnest. His palm’s a little rough on the head. It makes Patrick wince and jerk in his grip, but it hits him, all of a sudden, he doesn’t want it to stop. Every touch feels amplified, he feels the beating of Jonny’s heart against his back and the rise and fall of his chest thrum straight through him, like he’s a tuning fork. It’s amazing. He didn’t even realize he’d started matching his breaths to Jonny’s own.

He doesn’t even mean to start grinding back against Jonny. It’s instinctive, a basic need driving his hips back. Jonny makes a small choked sound in the back of his throat, tries to put a little distance between their hips, but Patrick doesn’t let him have it. It feels good, grinding back against Jonny like that, while Jonny’s hand moves up and down in a measured, perfect rhythm.

“Fuck,” he says, throwing his head back against Jonny’s shoulder as he feels him start to chub up in his pajama pants.

“It’s friction. You could lay off rubbing up all over me,” Jonny bitches, misinterpreting his outburst entirely. “then it wouldn’t happen.”

Patrick breathes deep, twisting in Jonny’s grasp, pushing his ass back against him harder. God, Jonny’s hand is perfect, warm, grip just right. It’s the best handjob Patrick’s ever gotten. “Feels good,” he slurs.

Jonny huffs out a surprised laugh. “Whoa, okay.”

Patrick shudders in his grip. He loves it when Jonny talks, the way his words are said right into Patrick’s skin because of how he’s curled around Patrick’s body. He loves the way he can feel Jonny’s each and every breath speed up as he grinds back more firmly against him. Patrick wants to touch more of him. He wants to be naked against Jonny’s velvet skin. It’s so soft and smooth against him. He wishes he was shirtless like Jonny right now. Jonny’s left hand is at his hip and he doesn’t know what possesses him, but he brings his palm down on top of it, tangling their fingers together.

“Shit,” he says, feeling his balls draw up. He’s close. It’ll be over fast, way faster than he would’ve thought.

“Yeah,” Jonny breathes, “c’mon now.”

Patrick comes, just like that, muscles locked up tight, making a horribly embarrassing mewling noise.

Jonny chuckles and wipes his hand off on Kaner’s sweatpants and tucks him back in. “Ooookay, guess you’re doing better.”

Patrick hates that self-possessed tone. He hates that he just lost it in front of Jonny like that, while Jonny gets to be this cool collected jackass. And Jonny’s dick feels good, hot against his ass, so it’s really a no brainer when he presses back and circles his hips.

“You can stop with that now,” Jonny says, sounding a little strangled. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Shut up,” Patrick replies, spinning in his hold. He gives Jonny a hard shove and taken off guard, Jonny stumbles and falls right back onto his bed.

“What?” Jonny says feebly and then all the breath goes out of him as Patrick drops down over his hips and starts rolling his ass down against him. “Ffffff—”

Patrick balances himself with a palm in the center of Jonny’s chest and thrusts back against him. He can feel the hard, hot length of Jonny’s cock, caught up under Jonny's waistband, perfect for Patrick to grind himself against. Jonny looks up at him, his eyes full of wonder, lips parted, wet. God, it’s hot. Why the fuck is that hot? They both seem to notice at the same time that they’re staring at each other. Jonny shuts his eyes tight, pressing his cheek back to the mattress as Patrick’s face flames up with a blush. Shit, what is he doing? He doesn’t care. He just. does not. care. He’s high, everything feels good right now. He might as well take advantage of it. It’s not gay under the influence or something.

Jonny comes with a stuttering gasp, hands fisted into the sheets, and Patrick’s hard again. His blood’s beating through him so strong and electric. He looks down at his cock, swollen against the front of his sweatpants and Jonny follows his eyes, still shivering a little under Patrick’s weight.

“Just do it, man,” he says softly, lower lip chewed raw.

And Patrick does, pulling himself out and going for it. He's a little chafed. Jerking it twice now without lotion. Shit this is such a bad idea he thinks as he tips his head back on his neck, barely able to hold it up. He needs lube or something. Right now, his dry hand on his dick is just this side of punishing, but if he moves, if he goes to get the lotion out of his bag, he’ll break the moment. It’ll definitely be fucking gay if he gets up, lubes himself up, and then climbs back on top of Jonny. Besides, there’s something about it, the not quite pain, which is kind of working for him.

Jonny shifts underneath him. Patrick looks down at him and finds him watching Patrick, eyes wide.

Patrick skin prickles with heat. He feels it travel down his spine. “Oh, shit,” he says, hand speeding up. He shuts his eyes again fast, but the sight of it is seared against his eyelids, Jonny’s face, the way his eyelashes had fluttered as Patrick had leaned a little more weight against his spent dick. It doesn’t take long after that. He comes all over the ripple of Jonny’s abs. He’s so tense it takes a moment to relax, the tingle still lingers in his balls. He opens up his eyes again to find Jonny staring open-mouthed at the mess of it painting his skin, abs bunching and contracting as it wells into the divot of his bellybutton.

Patrick breathes out and rolls off of him, sacked out flat on his back.

Well. At least he doesn’t feel like he’s gonna die anymore.


	8. Hetero Life Partners (September 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> puckling sent me this ask on tumblr, "They're just really, really married. And I hope they know that AND HAVE HAD THE THOUGHTS THAT YOU HAVE DESCRIBED." and then I wrote this, which went by the title "Evil Snippet" on tumblr.

It doesn’t sneak up on him slowly. It just fucking punches him in the face one day. He’s sitting across from Kaner at a restaurant, getting a late dinner after practice. Kaner’s a slow eater, but he’s finally finishing up, shoving his plate toward Jonny to take care of the last of his mashed potatoes. Jonny leans forward, fork at the ready. Kaner’s not even looking at him, he’s swirling the last of his ice in his glass to see if he can get any more water out of it. He swallows down the last of the water. His eyes crinkle up at the corners as he smiles at Jonny around the lip of the glass, Jonny smiles back, and then Kaner tilts the glass too high and the ice rushes down, hitting him in the face.

In that moment, ice hitting Kaner in the face, he realizes, dear god, the deep injustice of Kaner’s gender. Because fuck, if Kaner were a girl, Jonny would try so hard to get him—he knows with perfect clarity that it would be one of those situations where he’d be willing to completely humiliate himself, willing shopping trips and ballroom dance lessons and horrible, horrible rom com date nights level humiliation. He’d give him the world. He drops his eyes, spooning the suddenly tasteless mashed potatoes in his mouth and wonders what the hell that even means.

“Nnn, cold!” Kaner says, setting the glass down on the table and reaching for his napkin.

It’s not the end of the world. He doesn’t want to bang Kaner or anything, which would be awkward, given the proximity. Mostly he doesn’t even notice it. Once at a party, Jonny’s drunk and half passed out on a couch, and somebody plays that Of Montreal song “Tim I Wish You Were Born A Girl” and Jonny has a massive ‘I feel you, bro’ moment.

And he feels it when Kaner’s giving him shit. Or when he jumps into his arms on a celly. He feels it on the days that Kaner’s hurting and even more on the days he himself is hurting. It really sucks that the love of his fucking life, the absolute end all be all love of his life, is separated from him by something as stupid as bodies.

*

Patrick’s got no idea what Jonny would look like as a chick. Tall, he thinks, stacked, probably—that unfolds in his imagination pretty easily. The face though? He can picture his smile, the sweet close-mouthed one and the dorky grin, and his deep dark eyes. Even the sweep of his eyelashes on his cheek. But the way it would come together? He’s got nothing. But fuck, he’s not sure it would even matter what Jonny would look like as a girl. He’d be into it. Patrick knows it as sure as he knows he needs oxygen to breathe.

He gets totally smashed and spills the whole thing to Sharpy one night.

Sharpy practically spits out his beer. “What?”

Patrick cracks up, helpless, unavoidable drunk laughter, at the look on his face.

“Jesus. Have you…?” Sharpy asks, grabbing Patrick’s arm.

“What?” Patrick replies, it takes him a second to figure out what Sharpy’s implying. “No. No! Of course not.”

Sharpy shrugs. “What am I supposed to think here?”

“Christ, he’s still a dude! No!” Patrick replies, aghast. He sees Jonny naked in a very clinical capacity very regularly. Picturing his body now, sexually—Patrick starts shaking his head violently. “Just no!”

Sharpy’s starting to look a little annoyed now. “Man, you were just whining to me that Jonny was your other half. Usually, and god strike me dead if this is weird,” Sharpy replies, “I try to put my dick in the people I feel that way about.”

“Yes, I know!” Patrick yells back. “You’re not listening. That’s my fucking problem, asshole. He is like, honestly, my first thought when I wake up, and my last thought when I go to bed, okay? But—“ Patrick looks down his body at his own dick and gestures at it. “But there’s nothing.”

Sharpy sighs. “I’m sorry, little man.”


	9. High School AU Part A (October 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to thenorth--face's prompt asking for my take on Jock!Kaner, Nerd!Jonny. Warning for infidelity.

It’s a little disingenuous to call Jonathan Toews a nerd. Although that is very definitely how Patrick thinks about him. The kid’s in five APs and says Das Boot is his favorite movie. When the school tried to get rid of the Latin curriculum, Toews petitioned to make them to keep it and won. He got 2350 on the SATs and was all pissed off it wasn’t 2400. He’s a horrible, fucking nerd. Patrick doesn’t understand how somebody that joyless is alive. Or has friends.

But Toews has tons of friends. He’s the student body president for fuck’s sake.

When Patrick started slipping in history and his teacher roped Toews in to tutor him, Patrick wanted to jump off a bridge. He didn’t want to be Toews’ stupid college essay prompt—’how I helped hockey jock Patrick Kane get his grades up so he could keep his scholarship to BC.’

Which doesn’t really explain why Patrick’s got him flat on his bed, B&T textbook discarded on the floor, grinding down against him and tongue-fucking his mouth. Patrick’s got a girlfriend and there are way better things he could be doing right now. Frankly way better people he could be doing. But this is like the eighth time now he’s wound up making out with Toews right in the middle of some lecture on the importance of the Hundred Years’ War (noted: don’t randomly declare yourself King of France).

Every time he got into Toews’ room, with Oasis playing on the goddamn stereo and the smell of crisp detergent, he was springing wood. They hadn’t even really done anything that interesting. Patrick had been having sex for two years. He was way past the holding hands and making out stage, but shit, it was like he couldn’t stop himself.

Toews makes these noises, these small ones, in the back of his thoat, like he’s done too much during lift. Not that he’s done lift with Toews. He thinks he does crew or sailing or some bullshit like that. Patrick hasn’t bothered to ask, but his forearms are decently solid and his chest is jacked. But the noises, they’re killer. Patrick bites at his mouth and grinds down against him harder, loving the way Toews shudders like a little bitch beneath him.

He’s thinking about how many tutoring sessions he has left and how he could be fucking Marianne, his girlfriend, and instead he’s here, in bed, with this punkass.

“Fuckkkk you,” he says into Toews’ throat when he manages to get his hand into Patrick’s nylon basketball shorts.

“Yeah?” Toews breathes, “Maybe next time.”

And that makes Patrick swallow. Because…what would that be like? He’s never done anal. He suggested it to Marianne once, but she’d looked at him with big wide eyes and shook her head a lot. “I don’t want to make a mess,” she kept saying. Like Patrick cared, that wasn’t the fucking point.

It wouldn’t be the same without a sweet pink cunt to push his fingers into while thrusting inside. But…oh fuck, fucking Toews’ ass. He hasn’t seen him with his clothes off, but he’s had his hands on it, firm muscle flexing against his palms. He catches Toews’ mouth in a biting kiss and thinks, Marianne would probably do it if he pushed for it. And Patrick has considered it at times. Other guys on the team have done it. He’s got a girlfriend who could give him all of this—so why the hell is he here lying in this bed, fingers tangled together with Toews’, breathing each other’s breaths, hips working hard. It’s not even comfortable. Toews’ jeans chafe against Patrick’s legs, the ridge of his fly is almost too harsh against Patrick’s dick. But it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t stop.

He couldn’t. 

*

So. This started as a thing—Jonny suspects—to waste time in the middle of Patrick’s tutoring sessions. But, what it’s become now is furtive kisses out back behind the bleachers where no one can see them. They're shoved up against a stanchion, visible enough if somebody should come looking. Patrick's got his hands fisted in his sweater, pulling him down to meet his mouth.

He’s wearing a baseball cap that he had to spin backwards so that he could lean in to mouth at Jonny’s neck and a ‘trust me, I’m a doctor' t-shirt. He’s every inch the sort of person Jonny never thought he’d be interested in. But those are his hands in Patrick’s back jean pockets, bringing Patrick’s dick flush with his thigh, those are his groans and softly bitten off cries.

Jonny wants to ask how the fuck this became his life, fucking around on school grounds. He always used to judge the kids who brought pot to school, who hooked up in the library—there were entire portions of the day you weren’t here where you could do all of this shit and the consequences of being caught by your parents, while embarrassing, were far less dire. And now, Jonny’s one of those idiots. He’d caught Patrick’s eye across the quad at lunch and now here they are.

Patrick gets his hand into Jonny’s jeans, wraps his fist tight around his dick and starts stroking. It’s a shock to Jonny’s system—the first time Patrick’s ever had his hand on him, previously they’ve just rubbed off in bed. Jonny figured Patrick would have gay panic if he ever actually had to touch it.

“Ah, shit, bro,” Patrick says, shoved in close, watching Jonny’s face. “You look—well you know what you look like.”

Jonny doesn’t know what he looks like. He’s not out. He’s never had anybody talk him through this. He’s not a virgin, but a few sloppy times, in 10th grade, when he was still trying to make it with a girlfriend, that doesn’t grant much experience. Not like Patrick, who was fucking senior girls when he was a sophomore.

Patrick works him so good and Jonny can’t take the heavy weight of his gaze. He catches his face up for another kiss and then says, “Gimme some room, asswipe,” shoving Patrick back just enough to wrench open his fly.

Patrick’s loud. Jonny realized that pretty early. Hence why his stereo always had to be on whenever Patrick was over. Too many near misses. He clams up now though, forehead dropping to Jonny’s shoulder, pace slowing to match Jonny’s own hand on his dick. He’s cut, which Jonny isn’t, and Jonny has to be careful of it. He’s watched enough porn to know that much.

“Hurry up, hurry up,” Patrick tells him, voice gone ragged. “We’ve got five minutes before the bell.”

Jonny can barely think straight. Whose hand is on whose dick? Everything is all mixed up and backwards and. Fuck. He can’t believe he’s having his gay milestones with Patrick Kane. That he actually even fucking thought about letting—about letting him fuck Jonny in the ass. Just the thought of it now, is enough to bring him over the edge, and he comes on a sob, head thunking back on the stanchion.

When his hand stills on Patrick’s dick, Patrick curses at him, and Jonny dreamily has to remember to keep going. He curls his wrist almost lackadaisically. Somehow summoning up the wherewithal to make it good. When Patrick comes, all over Jonny’s hand, thankfully missing his clothing, Jonny shudders a second time. He doesn’t understand why Patrick’s come coating his fingers is hot. It shouldn’t be.

“Were you serious?” Patrick whispers into his ear, still pressed up against him as his breaths slow down.

“About what?” Jonny asks. He’ll shove Patrick away in a moment. Impose a safe respectable distance between them.

Patrick makes a soft noise. “About letting me fuck you.” 

The words make Jonny go hot all over. Patrick’s got a girlfriend. She’s in Jonny’s English class. Jonny wonders what the fuck is wrong with him that he goes and he sits across from her in that room and doesn’t even feel bad. 

Serious? Yes. He guesses he was.


	10. High School AU Part B (April 2015)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part II of the high school infidelity saga started [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3491390/chapters/7670897).

This is Patrick's life: he diligently tries to keep his grades up. He goes over the materials BC sent him–housing and course requirements and meal plans. He takes Marianne out. He fucks her. He lies to himself diligently and says he’s not thinking about fucking Toews. He keeps hooking up with Toews. He watches gay porn. He stops thinking of Toews as Toews and starts thinking of him as Jonny. He wonders what the hell is wrong with him.

Jonny’s parents and brother go out of town for Memorial Day weekend, and he doesn’t go with them because of cramming for APs or some shit. Patrick isn’t thinking anything of it, because of the aforementioned cramming, but when Jonny shows up at Carolyn Valdez’s pool party, it pops into his head. Marianne’s in the pool in a criminally tiny bikini, breasts spilling out. She’s so fucking hot and every guy here wishes he were hitting that, and yet he’s watching Jonny as he plays beer pong, board shorts riding low, and a tangle of stupid friendship bracelets around his wrist.

There’s only water in his solo cup. He drove tonight and he’s not drinking, but nobody else needs to know that. Right now though, hitting it hard on a couple of Buds wouldn’t be so bad.

He shakes his head and goes inside to piss. He’s not thinking about fucking Jonny. He’s really not. He’s thinking about how angry he is at himself for not thinking about fucking Marianne. He’s thinking about how this water needs more ice. He’s thinking about how much this party blows.

And then he runs into Jonny in the kitchen as he’s filling up his glass, sheened with sweat, smelling of sunscreen and chlorine and the bitter tang of alcohol, and he’s definitely thinking of fucking Jonny. Jonny looks at him with these deer in the headlight eyes, his tongue darts out over his lower lip. Jesus. He’s thinking of ruining Jonny.

Patrick wants to say something clever and glib, something cutting even, to reduce this hold that Jonny has on him.

Jonny’s eyes dart towards the sliding glass door leading out to the pool patio and everybody outside. Patrick watches him as he shakes his head, expression rueful and then says, “I was serious.”

“What?” Patrick asks dumbly.

Jonny runs his eyes up and down him, gaze a palpable thing. “The question you asked me.”

Maybe if Patrick hadn’t been thinking about fucking him. If he hadn’t been dreaming of it, consumed with it, fucking obsessed, he’d have to ask for clarification. But he has been, and so he knows instantly what Jonny is telling him.

“Now?” he asks hoarsely, right hand tightening up into a fist. His dick starts hardening in his trunks.

Jonny swallows and then shrugs. “Not here.”

“Okay,” Patrick replies.

It’s funny that the moment that Patrick feels bad in all of this is the moment where he abandons his girlfriend at a pool party, but it is. Jonny climbs into his car with him, and he thinks about how put out she’ll be when she realizes he’s left; for a moment he hesitates.

“All good?” Jonny asks curiously.

“Yeah,” Patrick tells him, throwing the car in drive. It might’ve given him pause, but only for a moment.

*

“Have you—“ Jonny asks as he’s stripping off the hoodie he threw on before getting into Patrick’s car. He’s shirtless underneath. The empty house is quiet, just the AC unit and the sounds of birds outside. There’s nobody here. No need for music this time. It’s a little unsettling. 

“No,” Patrick says shortly, cheeks turning hot. “Have you?”

Jonny turns his back as he tugs his trunks down, and Patrick holds his breath as he watches tan flesh give way to paler skin—the smooth globes of his ass cheeks and powerful tops of his thighs left untouched by sun. He’s so busy staring that he nearly doesn’t register the way Jonny pauses and then shakes his head. It’s nerves, Patrick realizes and waits for annoyance to swamp him. He doesn’t have time for virgins, not even when he still was one. But instead the enormity of what Jonny’s offering him swells over him instead, and that, somehow, is worse. Patrick wants to be fucking worthy of it.

“Do you know how to do this?” Patrick asks.

“I’m gay, man,” Jonny tells him, sounding amused now. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about how this is supposed to go.”

It’s weird to have that thrown out there. Weird because Patrick doesn’t know what he is, wouldn’t know how to label or quantify it, and certainly isn’t ready to say whatever that might be out loud.

Patrick kisses him because he’s overwhelmed. He pulls Jonny in close even though he’s still fully dressed and Jonny’s wearing nothing. His skin is so warm Patrick swears he can feel the heat in the air around him. He slides his hands across Jonny’s ass, digs his fingers into the solid muscle, and he pictures what it’s going to be like to get in there.

“So?” Patrick says with a grin, molding Jonny’s palm over his dick. Jonny exhales and tightens his hand.

The thing he didn’t anticipate when he imagined this was how much time the lead up was going to take.

After half an hour, he’s got just two fingers in Jonny’s ass. He couldn’t stick his cock in right now if he tried. They’re both tense and Patrick’s embarrassed. He’s embarrassed of the way Jonny’s dick flops limp on his stomach, of the way he bites at his lip at Patrick’s scissoring his fingers like he’s bracing for a punch to the gut.

“I don’t…” Patrick says weakly. It’s always been hot between them. Too hot almost, so fast-paced and furious they’ve gotten stupid with it a few times, hooking up on campus or forgetting to lock the door on Jonny’s bedroom. He never thought Jonny wouldn’t be into it…

He doesn’t know what possesses him, why he bends his head and puts his mouth on Jonny’s soft cock. Jonny’s skin tastes of salt and pool water, but when Patrick skates his tongue over the slit, Jonny moans softly and starts to thicken up in Patrick’s mouth. The tension goes out of him a little as Patrick slurps inexpertly at the head, and the fingers Patrick has inside of him sink a little deeper. Patrick doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s just sliding Jonny’s cock back over his tongue, taking him deep enough to make his jaw ache and his gag reflex kick in, and still he keeps going until he’s choking around it, precome thick in the back of his throat. Jonny stares down at him with wide eyes, and when Patrick pulls back, tears trailing down his cheeks, coughing, he finds he can shove another finger into Jonny easy.

Jonny arches, reaches down and grabs the base of his dick like he’s afraid of coming. Is he afraid of coming? Patrick wonders, wiping at his mouth with the back of his free hand, fingers still twisting inside of him. Patrick’s insistently ignored arousal just becomes insistent. He drops his forehead to Jonny’s thigh and takes a moment to roll his hips against the bed. That lubed up heat banded tight around his fingers pulses as Jonny clenches down and Patrick moans. Goddamn.

He sucks at Jonny’s cock almost as a distraction, sliding back his foreskin gently like Jonny showed him when they were jerking each other off. The slick satin texture of the head is different from Patrick’s own and he’s fascinated by it, dragging his tongue over and over it. Marianne complains about sucking his dick. She says it takes him too long to come and she doesn’t like the taste, but Patrick likes the weight of Jonny’s cock filling up his mouth, the bitter saltiness of him on his tongue. He’s humping Jonny’s sheets now, the shift-shift sound of it loud over the sloppy noises of his own mouth.

Patrick pushes his fingers in a little harder than he meant to, and Jonny brings his wrist up to his mouth and bites at the spur of it. As he drops his hand, Patrick sees the red imprint of his teeth. He looks up at Jonny, full of wonder. This is the hottest thing he’s ever seen.

“I think–now,” Jonny tells him, spreading his thighs wider and hitching up his hips, so that Patrick can’t look away from the tight red furl of his hole clinging to Patrick’s knuckles. Patrick pulls his mouth off of Jonny’s cock with a pop. When he fumbles for the condom, his fingers are so slick with lube and his own spit that he can’t tear the packet open and Jonny has to do it for him. Jonny rolls the rubber down on him and Patrick has to restrain a groan at the squeeze of his fist around him.

When he finally slides inside, Jonny goes tense around him, eyes shut tight, enough that it’s hard to keep pushing forward. Jonny exhales, grinding his head back into the pillows, and slowly starts to work his dick. As Jonny begins to relax again around him, Patrick’s hit with a sudden burst of paranoia.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks urgently, worrying Jonny’s imagining somebody else to get him through this moment when all Patrick can think of is how gone he is for him.

“Mmm,” Jonny says, rolling his cheek on the pillow, hand slowly starting to speed up. “The way you looked with my dick in your mouth.”

Patrick rocks in hard, sliding all the way home on a ragged gasp, and Jonny arches underneath him. He’s so tight Patrick worries about popping off way too early. Jonny struggles around his girth, he feels it.

“You want me to pull out?” Patrick asks raggedly, dropping his forehead to Jonny’s shoulder.

“No, no, fuck, it’s fine,” he gasps. He shudders when Patrick strokes back out. And that’s all the go-ahead he needs. He picks up a rhythm, fucking into Jonny steadily, listening to the measured creaking of his mattress. They’ve hooked up often enough that it’s a familiar noise, grinding up against each other in bed. It’s surreal, all of it.

“Bet you didn’t think your first time would be with me,” Patrick tells him, voice raw. He’s aiming for vicious. It comes out soft, curious.

Jonny winds his hand through Patrick’s curls, fingers scraping over his scalp, and doesn’t answer. He tugs Patrick down to kiss him, but that must change the angle up, because Jonny jerks in his arms, lips sliding across his cheek rather than his mouth. He pushes his cheek into the pillow and makes a softly drawn out ‘mmm’ noise, clamping down reflexively around Patrick’s dick. He’s let go of his own cock now and is allowing it to just glide along the seam of Patrick’s abs as he thrusts in.

“What’s it–what’s it feel like?” Patrick asks breathlessly, struggling hard not to come.

“Hurts, but,” Jonny says brow furrowed, “feels good too. Maybe next time not with somebody so big.”

A jolt goes through Patrick at that admission of Patrick’s endowment at the same time that a feeling of extreme displeasure comes over him. Somebody else. He doesn’t like that idea at all. And it’s also the last thing he wants to be thinking about when he’s about to nut in Jonny’s ass.

“Show me how to—” Patrick starts. “Show me how to make you come.”

Jonny shakes his head, pink across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. “Want you to suck my cock again.”

Patrick lets out a startled noise. He shoves in twice more before coming explosively. Jonny breathes like he’s just run liners, muscles gone taut as if it was his own orgasm. He’s still hard between them though. Patrick’s watched enough porn now to know that doesn’t always happen. He pulls out, heedless of the used condom on the sheets and bends his head to suck Jonny’s cock back into his mouth. He’s still buzzing with his own orgasm, still not reasoning entirely clearly, but he knows one thing, he doesn’t want Jonny thinking about anyone else.

Patrick hollows his cheeks around him, trying to imitate what he’s seen in porn and what girls have done on him. Jonny seems pretty easy for it though, cursing, thigh muscles trembling. His spine bows when Patrick slides two fingers back into the heat of him where he’s still loose and slick from Patrick’s dick.

“Pull off—” Jonny tells him, tapping at his cheek. “I’m gonna…”

Patrick ignores him, sucking harder still, and when Jonny comes, he does his best to swallow it all down, but some of it still spills out of his mouth. Jonny stares down at him with hazy eyes, chest rising and falling hard. He reaches out and smears his come around the corner of Patrick’s mouth with his fingertips. Patrick follows them with his tongue, curling around the pads. Jonny exhales. He drops his hand flat to the mattress. It’s the same one he bit earlier, and the marks of his teeth are still visible.

Under Patrick’s heavy gaze, Jonny drops his eyes. He clears his throat and suddenly everything is uncomfortable. “I need a shower,” he tells Patrick and then rolls gingerly out of bed. Patrick lies still, mouth feeling abraded, sweat still cooling on his skin. A few moments later the shower hisses to life. He sighs and reaches for shorts. When he finds it, there are seven angry texts from Marianne.

 _Sorry babe._ He types out. _Will make it up to u._


	11. Possession (October 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is my contribution for the October 31st, 1988 halloween fic thingy. Just a few things before you read it. There is some mention of violence and suicide ideation. Please don’t read if this will trigger you in any way.
> 
> _Blink and You'll Miss It._

Jonny starts losing time after they get knocked out of the playoffs in 2012.

Small moments at first, where he forgets what he’s saying in the middle of a sentence or can’t remember how he ended up in his kitchen. It seems like stupid, typical stuff at first, your remote ending up in the fridge because you got up in the middle of watching football. Plain old tired forgetfulness.

But then whole hours start to disappear. He’ll show up at the UC and be looking down at his skates, laces tight in his hands, and the next moment, he’ll be standing on the ice by the net, with Kitch going over details on a play. He doesn’t know how he got there. He doesn’t remember putting the rest of his gear on. He doesn’t remember how he earned the sweat running down his forehead.

“You okay there, Jonny?” Kitch asks, looking concerned.

Jonny tries to answer, but the words slide away. They won’t even come out of his mouth. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him.

An intense pressure forms around his heart and doesn’t let up until he says, strangled, frightened, “I’m fine.”

Kitch looks at him askance and Jonny repeats it, and this time it doesn’t hurt.

And so it continues. Sometimes he loses entire days. Sometimes he can remember everything that happens to him for several weeks straight. He doesn’t remember fighting Joe Thornton.

He sees the footage afterwards and feels sick. He wants to tell somebody, anybody, that something is wrong, but the suffocating pressure on his heart always stops him up short. He tries—with his mother, with Kaner, with Q, and on one memorable occasion with the press. Each time, he hurts himself worse and the gaps in his memory last longer when they come. 

Jonny goes away. He feels it happening these days. A subtle pulling at him that lets him know what’s coming. He goes away on June 22nd and suddenly blinks back into focus, with Kaner saying, “I love you, Jonny, way to step up big,” arms wrapped around him, people cheering.

They’ve won the cup and he missed it. The last thing he remembers is getting the assist off of Patrick’s goal in Game 5. There's Bruins banner in the rafters. They’re in TD Gardens. So. They won it in 6. He wishes he could remember it.

He stepped up apparently.

Jonny helped to win his team another cup and looking at Patrick’s smiling face, all he wants to do is breakdown and cry. How? Why is this happening?

Jonny goes away again and he doesn’t come back until after the cup parade.

*

He wakes up, sitting on the rail of his balcony, rain pouring down. It startles him hard and he falls off, thankfully back onto his patio.

He wonders then, was this other self, this self that looks exactly like him, that does and says the right things, but cannot be him, because otherwise Jonny would goddamn well remember, was this other self trying to kill him?

Jonny makes his way inside, shivering, hurt. He considers—why not do it? He’s missing half his life, sometimes the best moments. Great games and important birthdays and less personal things like the world series and general elections. Sometimes when he tries to say things, the words get all tangled up and he sounds like a fool. He’s not sleeping well. If he thinks he’s too tired, too unwell to play a game he loses the time and he comes out the other side having played fine.

He gets the message then. Be healthy, stay calm. He goes a six month stretch without losing any time at all.

And then on March 30th, he gets hit, and something doesn’t feel right in his shoulder and he thinks—that’s it, he’s going away now.

But he stays right where he is, limping off the ice with his arm useless at his side. He wonders if maybe it’s over, whatever that horror of lost time and blackouts and forgotten moments was, it’s finally come to an end.

He fumbles for his phone in the locker room, tapping out the words in a text to Kaner, “I need to tell you…” and blinks out a second later.

It’s like coming back online, Jonny thinks as the black fades before his eyes to see Patrick in a practice jersey running agility drills. He doesn’t know how many weeks later it is. Must be in time for the post-season.

Jonny’s shoulder, when he moves it, feels better. When he does a couple of sprints back and forth on the ice, his conditioning is still where it should be. Maybe he’s supposed to be thankful his body sees fit to take care of itself when he’s not inside it.

At the end of practice with Patrick, they go out for dinner and Patrick talks and despite the steadiness of the past six months Jonny is terrified of how much of it he doesn’t know. He flickers in and out the entire conversation—the body answering for him he supposes, in the moments where an answer he doesn’t have is required.

“Jonny, is something wrong?” Patrick asks as he pulls his credit card out to pay the bill.

Yes. Everything is wrong. He’s a stranger in his own body. There’s something else inside him. It should just take over, he thinks, it’s mostly living his life for him at this point.

“No, I—” it’s the most he’s ever managed, but the sudden vice on his lungs, like taking a punch to the diaphragm, cuts him off. Patrick’s face swims before him and blinks out.

He comes back on the plane to St. Louis, Patrick sitting beside him.

When Jonny jerks in his seat, Patrick looks over at him. “What’s up, bro?”

He shakes his head. Breathes out. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.

Jonny’s learned by now the only way to have his life, to let it be his, is to keep playing hockey, to not get hurt. But he’s beginning to hate the game, this thing that makes him into something he isn’t. His disappearances aren’t triggered by fights with his parents or girlfriend. They’re not triggered by bad days or having to do his taxes. He gets to stick around for those. Although he doesn’t have a girlfriend anymore. The horror of the other self—of the other self—of not being able to tell her that she was maybe, possibly fucking somebody who wasn't him…well, he’d had to end it.

*

He stays the whole way through the playoffs and through the summer. He manages to feel mostly happy when he re-signs. He will always be glad to play with Patrick.

He doesn’t get hurt. He doesn’t blink out.

But then roster cuts start happening. He’s fine. He’s completely fine. He’s not trying to tell anybody, so why is he turning off and on like a crappy fluorescent light?

Things seem to stabilize a little bit when Mashinter gets hurt. He manages a whole day, from sunup to sundown able to remember everything that’s happening.

A few days later, Q very loudly lambasts Crow for letting in the soft goals and seconds later Jonny’s in darkness again. He wakes up to Raanta asking him about his first start. “What?” he wants to say, but he feels the yank at his consciousness. The other self is warning him. So instead he pats Raanta on the shoulder and says everything will be fine.

He can’t ask anybody about what happened to Crow, because he’s already supposed to know. The disappearances and the injuries though—is Jonny hurting people? He thinks, looking down at his hands, maybe, yes.

He knows for sure when Carcillo gets hurt a few days later. Jonny was gone the whole time. Horror and desperation wash over him. He tries to tell somebody. He’s never tried so hard to tell somebody in his entire life, but the body gets yanked from him after too much of that. When he gets it back, it’s like being handed a toy and being told that he’s being trusted to play nice with it this time.

Q demotes Patrick to the fourth line. Jonny gets to stay awake for that, although he almost wishes he didn’t—Patrick’s tense shoulders, his resolute face.

When he comes back, it’s in his bed, the Sun-Times lying open on the sports pages beside him. A headline is circled: Blackhawks Coach Rushed to Hospital After Pulmonary Embolism. Jonny falls off the bed, trying to get away from it. But there’s nowhere to go and he doesn’t know who’s gonna be next. Jonny doesn’t have pills. He doesn’t have a gun. But he could jump off the balcony. It’s messy, of course. He’d hate for that to be part of the Blackhawks narrative. He’d hate to hit ground and have anybody have to see that. But what option does he have? He runs for the double doors and he gets his fingertips on the handle before he disappears.

He has a brief flash—Patrick’s face, telling him to fight it—but it disappears as quickly as it comes. When he blinks back into existence, he’s not quite sure it’s real. There’s pain. So much pain. Jonny goes away again.

His shoulders ache. It feels like they’ve been aching for a while. He lifts his head and blinks into the dim light. He’s cuffed to the metal handicap bar they have in some hotel room showers, lying soaked in the bathtub. Patrick’s staring at him, mouth swelled up like he’s been punched, front about as wet as Jonny.

“Jonny?” Patrick asks and two voices go to answer.

“Yes,” they say. Jonny wants to vomit.

“What happened to you?” Patrick asks.

Jonny is about to say he has no idea. He doesn’t even understand what’s going on, but the other voice seizes his lips and answers for him: “They summoned me.”

Patrick looks grim. He doesn’t ask who ‘they’ is. Although Jonny wants desperately to scream out, who? who did this to me? “To do what?”

The body laughs. “This precious little doll kept breaking.” Jonny’s shoulders shrug as much as they can when they’re tied to a safety bar above his head. “They wanted to win.”

“And the others? The ones you injured?” Patrick asks him.

So then. It’s true. Jonny knows now. He wonders how he did it. The body talks, but it’s Jonny who cries.

“They were dead weight,” it says.

Patrick’s expression is unreadable. “But Q summoned you and you put him in the hospital. That’s not in the rules. You shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

The horror of it slides like poison down Jonny’s throat. Q did this to him. Q and others. How many others? But the body is not done talking and it’s not giving Jonny a chance to ask questions. “He hurt you.”

Patrick laughs harshly. “Let’s not pretend you care about me.”

The body rolls its shoulders in another insouciant shrug. “Jonathan does. He loves you.” It laughs. “It’s like a sickness. He was so displeased that Q would do that to you.”

Jonny wants to scream. He’s held that within himself for so long, a closely guarded secret, and this thing has taken everything from him. His second Stanley cup, great stretches of time, the girlfriend he was happy with, his players, any trust he will ever have in the Blackhawks organization.

The rage and fear and desperation is enough that Jonny wrests control of the body back for one short moment. “You need to end it,” he manages.

Patrick looks back at him, looks through the other-self and sees Jonny. “I will, Jonny.”

“Goodbye,” Jonny whispers and then the body starts laughing.

The familiar choking sensation surges up within him even as Patrick leans in and kisses him. The pain returns, a clawing scraping sensation in his head, it seems to go on for hours and when he finally comes back, he’s lying in a bed with a warm body next to him.

“What day is it today?” he asks out loud, terrified, and then realizes it’s even possible to ask that question, to finally say the words out loud.

Patrick rolls over. There are horrible bluish circles beneath his eyes. He rubs at his face tiredly, but slowly tells him, “November 1st, 2014.”

“How much time did I lose?” Jonny asks.

Patrick sits up, hands on his shoulders, drawing him back down to the bed. “It’s over, Jonny, it’s over.”

They lie like that for a long time, Patrick’s arm across his chest, finally Jonny asks, “How did you figure it out?”

Patrick slowly turns his head. “Takes one to know one.” 

*


	12. Laid out on the bed (November 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by this [tumblr post](http://peppersheart.tumblr.com/post/102371008097/im-not-saying-people-should-write-porn-in-honor).

Patrick’s braced on the edge of the mattress, sweaty fingers curling into the sheets. It’s easy like this, spread out on his belly, Jonny above him, fucking him lazily slow. Each steady roll of his hips makes sparks light up behind his eyes. 

Jonny mouths at the wing of his shoulder, mumbling nonsense phrases about how good Patrick feels around his dick, how he could do this forever. Patrick doesn’t need to hear the content, just the sound of Jonny’s ragged voice drifting over him. Jonny wraps an arm around him, palm sliding across Patrick’s throat, tilting his head up. Patrick shudders, swallowing against his fingertips. 

"Jonny," he breathes before sinking his teeth into his lower lip. 

Jonny thrusts in harder now, flexing in short sharp bursts that make Patrick shake underneath his weight. Jonny fills him up deep with every push inside and it feels like he can feel it in his lungs. He’s gasping now, fingers going white knuckled as he fists his hands tighter, trying to hold on. 

"Feels so good," he slurs, forced open around Jonny’s dick, body accepting him so easy. He tenses his thighs, clenching down and Jonny lets out a sound like pain, closing a hand on Patrick’s shoulder. 

Patrick turns his head, resituating himself to push back into it and his eyes snag on the sight of them in the mirror on Jonny’s dresser. Spit floods his mouth at the sight of them—Jonny’s biceps bunching and tightening, his abs thrown in sharp relief with every downward shove. Patrick can’t look away. His eyes have gone glassy, he looks drunk. With his dick trapped under his hip against the mattress he’s not even that close to coming. But he wants. He just wants. 

"C’mon," Patrick tells him, raising up a little on his knees so that Jonny sinks in deeper. 

They shiver at the same moment and Jonny pumps in a few more times and comes with a punched out groan. Patrick lies still underneath him, tremors going through him. He’s on the edge now, waiting to see what Jonny will do. 

Jonny pulls out, careful and slow, but the two fingers he plunges back inside make Patrick arch his back, grinding down against the mattress. The sounds coming out of his mouth couldn’t be described as anything other than sobs. Jonny remains half tilted over him, left thigh still draped over Patrick’s right, hand working. Patrick watches the ripple of muscle in his body in the mirror and then realizes with a start that Jonny’s watching him in the reflection. 

When Patrick meets his eyes in the glass, mouth dropping open around harsh panting gasps, Jonny smiles just the barest bit and drops a kiss to Patrick’s nape. Patrick’s working his dick against the sheets now, pushing back against the fingers Jonny’s twisting inside him, the tips curving to unerringly hit his prostate each time. 

Jonny thumbs at his perineum, his hot swollen rim. Patrick can barely keep his eyes open. Jonny flickers in and out of his vision, but he can’t stop watching, drinking the sight of the two of them in. 

"Hey, baby," Jonny says softly, tracing his nose over Patrick’s shoulder. He waits until Patrick’s dutifully meets his eyes again. "You gonna hold out on me all night?" he asks. 

He scissors fingers then, forcing them down hard against Patrick’s prostate. It’s too much. He bucks, biting his lip so hard it goes bloodless and comes on an exhaled breath, allowing himself to drop flat to the mattress. 

Jonny leaves his fingers inside while Patrick comes, the pad of his thumb still tracing over Patrick’s rim. The aftershocks still vibrate through him and this sensation on top of it is overwhelming. “Please…” Patrick says. 

Jonny stills his hand at last and then withdraws. He moves to give Patrick space, but Patrick doesn’t want to have it and he bats at him until Jonny gets the picture. “Could you just lay back down?” where you were before, Patrick doesn’t add. Jonny gets it anyway, covering him with his big body, hands gentle as they run over his shoulders. Patrick exhales and just lets himself feel it.


	13. Sequel to Hockeysexual 'Verse (December 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonny and Patrick's first fight in the [hockeysexual universe](http://archiveofourown.org/series/75052).

He doesn’t know how it escalated so quickly or where they took a wrong turn. When he fought with Jonny as a buddy, it was very different. It was frustrated quickly burned off rage. But now, redefined as they are in an honest-to-goodness relationship, every word out of Jonny’s mouth is like a body blow. They way it hit Patrick in his gut when Jonny says, low and murderous, “Oh, fuck you, Patrick, just fuck you,” as if Patrick hadn’t hurled those same words at Jonny countless times over the years whenever Jonny pushed him to the edge.

Jonny picks up his keys and bails, slamming Patrick’s door behind him and Patrick sinks into a chair at his dining room table, head resting on his arms. It’s fucking stupid, but the tears come. Because this night started off so well and he doesn’t know where it took a wrong turn. Somewhere along the way Jonny was shouting him down and Patrick was through with it. He was so goddamn done and he has a right to be mad, but if he could’ve just kept his mouth shut…

“Would you fucking shut up? Sometimes you say things like they’re universal truths and they just—” Patrick had exhaled sharply, “—sometimes you’re just talking out of your ass and it’s like you’re gonna bully me into agreeing with you. I don’t agree with you, but you won’t fucking quit. It’s not okay until I say you win.”

“I bully you?” Jonny replied, getting to his feet. “I fucking bully you now?”

And it had spiraled from there. With Patrick throwing his book at the wall just to hear the thud and Jonny telling him he was acting like a child. In the middle of screaming at Jonny about how he had absolutely no right to lecture him on well-adjusted adult behavior, Jonny started laughing, this bitter, awful condescending chuckle. He’d shrugged at Patrick, expression disdainful, and that’s where it ended, with ‘fuck you’ and Jonny scooping up his keys.

And shit’s been bad between them lately. Patrick feels like a powder keg all the time and sometimes the stuff that comes out of Jonny’s mouth just sets him off, but of course as soon as Jonny’s out that door, this horrified desperate feeling starts welling up within him. It’s funny that he’s been fighting with this guy for years, fights that nearly ended in physical violence, and yet somehow, this feels like the very first one.

Patrick hits the table with the flat of his palm, making everything on top of it jump and clatter. It’s only 7:45 PM, but Patrick doesn’t want to be awake anymore. It’s too hard to breathe and he feels miserable. He’s scared, he realizes. Maybe this is the end. Maybe Patrick can love Jonny with everything he has and it won’t even matter if he can’t love him in the right way.

He sleeps fitfully—dreams that he gets up in the morning and it’s all fixed, dreams that the fight never happened, and when he wakes up, unable to stay in bed any longer, it’s to the bitter realization that the fight did happen, Jonny did leave, and Patrick doesn’t know what to do.

Right before he heads in to practice he gets a text from Jonny. We need to talk. Patrick’s heart seizes in his chest. If Jonny wants to break up, he could fucking do it better than going with that trite bullshit.

I’ve already said everything there is to say, he sends back and then hurls his cellphone aside. Fuck him for doing this right before skate, where Patrick will have to see him and think about it the whole goddamn time. Jonny doesn’t send a reply. Patrick’s not surprised. What could he come back with? Patrick cut him off at the knees pretty good. He doesn’t know why he does it. This is childish behavior, but Patrick’s got an obstinate streak a mile wide and he can’t bring himself to regret it. If Jonny wants to break up, he’s not gonna get Patrick to do the work for him.

What makes it worse is that practice goes totally normal. Patrick feels like it should show somehow. They’re fighting. It’s been this way for weeks. Can’t anybody tell? He showers and dresses quickly at the end of it, getting out of there before anybody has a chance to talk to him.

*

His doorbell rings insistently, waking him up from a nap. Patrick finally rolls out of bed, muddled and confused. He’d dreamed about taking a trip to the French Riviera, Jonny’s favorite place in the world—only he’d gone without Jonny. He feels queasy at the thought of it. The doorbell rings again.

“Jesus, okay, hold your horses,” he says, pushing the door open, brushing sleep sand out of his eyes.

Jonny stands on the other side, hand raised to ring the doorbell again, chewing at his lower lip like he’s nervous. Patrick sighs. Fuck if they’re gonna break up, now is as good a time as any. He steps back into the apartment, gesturing Jonny inside.

Jonny shoves his hands in his pockets and crosses the threshold. Patrick turns and walks down the hall, Jonny following behind. “I shouldn’t have said those things,” Jonny says, quietly.

Patrick stops and turns. In all the years of Jonny slinging insults at him, he’s never once taken them back. Neither has Patrick. That’s not really a thing that bros do. Patrick swallows. The words don’t come easy and he has to look away to say them, “Neither should I,” Patrick replies. The horrible scared feeling comes welling back up. It would figure that they’d at least manage to break up like two grown-ass men.

“You’ve been so hard to reach lately,” Jonny says, sliding into his space, hands coming up to frame his face. Patrick swallows as Jonny runs his thumbs along Patrick’s cheekbones. “I know I keep pushing at you,” Jonny tells him. “I keep hoping that you’ll talk to me. Let me in. But if this isn’t working, then maybe…”

“I don’t want to break up,” Patrick says in a rush. “I don’t want to break up.”

He realizes stupid tears are gathering at the corners of his eyes again and his hands are fisted in Jonny’s shirt, keeping him close, like at any moment he’ll just walk away.

“Me neither,” Jonny tells him, letting out a breath, like he was worried that that was what Patrick wanted.

He doesn’t know who kisses who first how they get to the bedroom, but it’s rough. Patrick’s holding on too tight, but Jonny isn’t stopping him. Jonny’s gonna have welts from how indelicate Patrick is as he pulls his clothes off. Patrick likes that idea. That he’ll wear this moment on his skin.

When Jonny gets slicked up and pushes inside him, Patrick drops his hands to his ass, tugging Jonny into him. “Harder, fuck,” he breathes, letting his fingernails bite into Jonny’s vulnerable skin. Jonny slams in on a powerful thrust and the drag of his dick on Patrick’s insides, hitting his prostate on every other stroke is good, it’s so good. But it’s not what Patrick wants. “C’mon, harder.”

Jonny curses and drags Patrick’s legs up. He’s flexible; he needs that to power his skating. But when Jonny pushes his thighs back towards his chest, holding him splayed open with the arms he’s using to brace himself up on the bed, Patrick feels the stretch in his leg muscles. The angle is better this way, Jonny can get in deeper, harder and while Patrick can’t get his hands on Jonny’s ass anymore, he can draw him down into a filthy kiss that makes Jonny moan.

“Harder,” Patrick repeats, when he pulls away to breathe damply against Jonny’s throat, fingers sliding slippery sweat over Jonny’s shoulders.

Jonny obeys, driving in with all the power of his thighs and low back, and Patrick jerks, a strangled cry punched out of his mouth.

“Patrick, I’m hurting you,” Jonny says, pressing their foreheads together.

“No, no, fuck, do it just like this,” he begs. Jonny’s got decent-sized equipment, but like this he feels enormous, pounding hard into Patrick, making Patrick feel it. He’s been ignoring his dick this entire time, but now he reaches between them, wrapping his fist around it, stroking himself off in time with Jonny’s feverish thrusts. When Jonny hits his prostate in the same moment that Patrick thumbs the head of his dick, it proves too much and he comes on a muttered cry, slamming his head back to the pillows.

Jonny sobs, arms straining as Patrick clenches down around him. He slows then, hips stilling as he shifts so that Patrick can relax his legs to the bed. Jonny drops his weight in close, kissing Patrick for all he’s worth, hands sunk into Patrick’s curls. Patrick’s still coming down from his orgasm, still breathing hard. He grinds into Patrick in a measured circular motion, moving like molasses now. He almost hates it when Jonny’s gentle with him like this, especially in the aftermath of his climax. It makes him shiver and cling all the tighter to him. The contrast this time from the punishing way he demanded Jonny fuck him to every languorous roll of Jonny’s hips is overwhelming. Before long he’s trembling all over. Jonny comes with Patrick’s name on his lips.

He almost hates it. Except for the way he doesn’t know how he could do without it.


	14. Orgasm-a-thon for Charity (February 2015)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the one-sentence meme off of sophiahelix's prompt "Pat had to admit, much much later on, that an Orgasmathon for Charity was possibly a terrible idea." 
> 
> Inspired by this [article](http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a13266/fifty-shades-of-grey-in-one-weekend/) in Marie Claire.

It’s not his fault. Patrick blames Sharpy for this one. He chirped Patrick about his sex life, said there was no way he’d be able to do that stupid charity thing to do all the sex scenes in Fifty Shades of Grey in a single weekend. And then you know, Jonny had the fool idea to agree to it when Patrick suggested they try it.

"How many sex scenes are in that book?" Jonny asked over dinner.

"Only fourteen," Patrick told him.

Jonny choked on a piece of lettuce. “Fourteen?” he asked with no little trepidation after taking a generous gulp of water to clear his throat.

"What, think you can’t handle it?" Patrick replied, sitting back in his chair.

Jonny’s eyes turned steely. “I can handle it.”

So really, none of this could possibly be his fault.

He wakes up on Saturday. It’s 8:30 am, his internal clock won’t let him sleep any longer, and they have a lot of sex to cover. He thumps Jonny in the side. “Wake up, we have a busy day ahead of us.”

Jonny groans, pulling his pillow over his head. “Fuck, fifteen more minutes.”

All in all, not a very romantic start. 

Patrick’s no amateur though. “C’mon, baby,” he whispers, rolling close to half blanket Jonny’s body and starts trailing his palm up and down Jonny’s back, keeping the touch light, he pulls the criminally tight boxer briefs Jonny sleeps in and takes a moment to appreciate the supple smooth skin of his ass, before trailing his fingers down Jonny’s crack, over his hole, back and forth, just grazing his rim with the edge of his nail. Finally Jonny shudders awake.

"Ugh," he says, pushing himself up onto his elbows, his cheeks are red creased from his pillow, but they’re also tinged pink the way they always get whenever he’s turned on. He looks gorgeous. "What’s supposed to happen here?"

"Oh, uh…" Patrick fumbles over his nightstand for the complete list. "Looks like missionary."

Jonny drops his head back to the pillow with a groan. “Of course I have to do all the work.”

1\. They’ve been sleeping together for a year now, the sex is good, Jonny knows how to get him just right—of course this ends up working for Patrick. He lies underneath him, arching up into his thrusts. The sounds of their harsh gasps fill the room. Patrick likes it, especially that soft little ‘uh’ noise Jonny makes when he’s starting to get close. They sound good together. 

"What is she like…supposed to come just from fucking?" Jonny asks, somehow managing a sardonic twist to his lips when he’s all sheened up with sweat, dicking Patrick deep with perfect rolls of his hips. "Are you allowed to jerk off?" Jonny asks, clearly amused.

Patrick hadn’t even been thinking about it. He’d just been enjoying it for the moment.

"C’mon, Patrick, let me see you jerk it while I fuck you," Jonny breathes into his ear. Patrick moans and Jonny pushes himself up so that he can watch as Patrick takes himself in hand, stroking himself hard and fast until he comes on Jonny’s dick. 

2\. Jonny didn’t even come. He pulls out and rolls himself out of bed, going to the bathroom stark naked to get himself a glass of water. Patrick luxuriates in the afterglow, watching his boyfriend move around their room with a massive hardon. Jonny drinks two whole glasses of water before coming back out.

"Okay what’s next?" he asks climbing back onto the bed.

Patrick rolls over onto his stomach. “Doggy style.”

Jonny swats Patrick’s ass. “Well alright then,” he says and when Patrick raises himself up on his hands and knees, pushes in without preamble. Patrick bites at his lip and flexes back into it, Jonny’s cock holding him open. They don’t usually manage twice in a single day, who has the fucking time with their schedule. It’s sheer dumb luck that they even have these two days free. 

"You’re supposed to go slow," Patrick explains, as per the sheet, when Jonny starts thrusting. Jonny obediantly slows his hips down to a glacial pace, fucking in deep and hard rather than fast. Patrick fists his hands in the sheets and lets his head drop between his shoulders. God, it feels good like this. Patrick finds himself stiffening back up and this time Jonny gives him the reach around, drawing Patrick off before coming himself. 

3\. Jonny doesn’t want to mouth-feed Patrick wine. Okay. Yeah, Patrick can understand that. That is pretty weird. Jonny also however, doesn’t want to pour the wine in Patrick’s belly button either, which come on now, this is all about the experience here.

"This is a good Côtes du Rhône," he explains, holding the bottle. "I’m not gonna waste it, pouring it all over the place."

Patrick covers his eyes and laughs. “Whatever, the point is to like, drink wine and put your mouth on me.”

"It’s 11 AM," Jonny points out.

Patrick shrugs.

Jonny rolls his eyes and then salutes him, before taking a swig directly from the bottle. In the next moment, he bends down and takes Patrick into his mouth, sucking at the head of his dick with verve.

So Jonny skipped a few steps. Whatever. Patrick doesn’t care. This entire plan was a great idea.

4\. They pass out for a little while after that, wake up, watch some SVU reruns over PB&J sandwiches because they were too lazy for anything else. After a little while longer, Patrick cracks his back and rolls over. He sticks his ass in the air. “Okay, come at me, tiger,” Patrick tells him.

"What’s it to be this time?" Jonny asks with a yawn.

"Spanking," Patrick says, grinning at him over his shoulder. "Bet you could get into that."

Jonny snorts and dutifully delivers a solid smack to Patrick’s right ass cheek that makes him cry out. “Oh, like that?”

5\. Jonny gets a positively evil grin on his face when Patrick tells him about number five. Of course he would, nipple play. He licks and sucks at Patrick nipples until Patrick’s a sobbing, writhing mess. The thought of coming is both relief and torture. He’s already come four times today.

He doesn’t know how he’s gonna survive a fifth. 

6\. “Nope,” Jonny says.

Well, that’s alright. Patrick doesn’t have a riding crop anyway. They settle for some good ole teenage dry humping. Totally the same, right?

7\. Patrick’s alarm goes off the next morning. God, they have 8 more scenes. Fuck. No. He has the worst ideas. He exhausted. This feels like being in a playoff stretch. 

"Jonny?" he croaks.

"What? What?" he demands, sitting bolt upright in bed as if waking up from a nightmare. 

"You’re supposed to tie me to the bed." 

Jonny breathes out and then gets up to disappear into his closet. He comes out a few moments later with a silk tie in hand, it’s a hideous one, covered with jack-o-lanterns. Right, Patrick’s gonna be harnessed to the bed with a Halloween necktie. That’s justice for you.

It winds up being good though. Jonny ties a good knot, and he gets his wrists over Patrick’s head in a way that doesn’t pull. It helps that he’s on his stomach for this he thinks. It feels easier to clench his hands around the headboard when Jonny slowly grinds inside.

Oh. Jesus. Jonny stretched out over him, Patrick immobilized, crying out underneath him. Yeah, that works for him. They’re gonna be doing this one again.

8\. They have the required quickie in the kitchen while Jonny’s making pancakes. Listen, Jonny works well with goals. And right now he’s got to get it done without burning any of Patrick’s breakfast. On your mark, get set, go!

9\. The less said about the ben wa ball experience the better. 

10\. Patrick has just popped balls out of his ass, okay. He’s not really in the mood to be bent over a desk and taken hard.

"What, are like, orphans gonna starve if I don’t bone you over my day planner?" Jonny asks. He looks a little worn.

Patrick groans. Jonny sighs.

"Hey, bend over, champ," he says, but the hand he runs over Patrick’s back is soft and comforting.

Patrick folds himself over it. Really, he kind of just wants to collapse. Jonny thrusts in once and then immediately pulls out. “Oh, look at that, I fucked you over my desk. Wasn’t it great?”

Patrick doesn’t think he’s taking this very seriously.

11\. Patrick’s going to have to buy more lube by the end of this weekend, they’ve already gone through all of Jonny’s supplies. But fuck’s sake. THERE WILL BE NO CHAFING!

He doesn’t know how he even has the strength to gets off when Jonny starts fucking him this time. Jonny’s eyes when he last looked into them were hollow and dead. Patrick may or may not fall asleep in the middle. He wakes up and the sheets underneath him are sticky, so he must’ve come.

Jonny’s lying sacked out on the bed next to him, dead to the world.

12\. Riding Jonny in the tub is kind of hilarious. One, because they’re trashing Jonny’s palatial luxury spa bathroom and two because he freaks out about wasting water. He’s supposed to take over at some point, because that’s what happens in the book, but when Jonny goes to lift him up, he very quickly lets go of the idea. 

"Ah, fuck it," he says, leaning back in the tub, "this one’s on you."

"What, are you giving up?" Patrick breathes, water sloshing around them.

Jonny lazes there sleepily, arms braced on the lip of the tub while Patrick bounces up and down. “Mmhm,” he breathes.

Well at least someone’s getting something out of this.

13\. Jonny rims him out. He’s got the regulation forearm braced low across Patrick’s back to hold him down, because usually Patrick can’t help thrusting back into him whenever they do this. Right now though, Patrick can barely remember his own name. And not because Jonny’s blowing his mind, but because all he wants is the sweet oblivion of rest. Oh dear god, let him rest.

"Do I…fuck you again?" Jonny asks after a little bit.

"I don’t care." 

14\. Patrick does a tally. Jonny’s only come twice today, once with the tie and once in the tub. Yesterday, he came 3 times—he’s at 5 to Patrick’s 8. Really, he knows in the book he’s just supposed to like, lie there and take it. But Patrick’s switching this shit up. Mostly because he can’t survive it. This is un-fucking-tenable. Who the hell would do this? 

The obvious answer is MORONS. Because now Patrick’s starting to think he’s never going to want to have sex ever again. It’s too bad really. Once, some time in the distant past, he had memories of sex being, like, you know, a good thing. Oh those sweet salad days.

He’s really not even insulted that Jonny puts on a movie while Patrick goes down on him. 

When Jonny comes, Patrick rolls over onto his back and declares to the ceiling, “Thank god.”

"I…hurt…everywhere…" Jonny says, as if he’d just seen the slaughter of innocents. "I want…to…die…"

"I regret everything," Patrick replies. "Everything."


	15. Anatomy of the Sword (April 2014)

He was born on an ill-luck day, the scion of an ill-luck house almost forgotten at the edge of the southern steppes. Despite the dry and crackling Maius weather, the rains rolled in as the midwife cut the cord and delivered him into his mother’s arms. His father watched lightning strike on the horizon from atop the battlements and tried not to think of Omens.

When Jonathan is six, he’s ripped from his mother’s arms and the familiar fields and valleys of his family’s lands, the detachment of foot soldiers they sent to ensure compliance wholly unnecessary against the castle’s depleted resources. His father’s people do not weep to see their quiet and serious young master barely out of short pants taken from them, it is not their way. But his mother is from the west, where the tales of women warriors take flesh, and has to be restrained from putting a dagger through the silver-helmed high constable’s eye after he delivers the royal order demanding her first born as a fosterling of the crown.

It takes three servants and his father to restrain her in grief-stricken fury. He hears the words his father mutters at her, bitter, but sensible, “This is not the way.”

Her tightly fisted hands and the snickering of the soldiers is the first lesson against directionless imprudent action that he ever receives.

They saddle him behind a young knight in gleaming dress armor and a heavy velvet cape. Jonathan has never seen such finery in his life.

"My thanks," the high constable says with a malicious laugh and wheels his horse around, riding up the column of soldiers to lead them out through the open gates.

As they canter out over the fields, Jonathan bouncing around uncomfortably in the saddle, his arms around an unfamiliar body, he looks back at his family’s ancestral seat. He does not see what these soldiers see, a crumbling fortress built in the outmoded rough-hewn style of centuries past, but the center of the universe, filled with the love of his mother, father, and toddling brother; the quiet strength of his uncles and exuberant laughter of his cousins. All of which could be so easily extinguished at the end of a capricious monarch’s blade.

They send him to the Virtus Pass, to the home of the Aux Valeria, where the hostile mountains once bred more Red Banners and Kings’ champions than any other place in the whole of The Firmament.

"Let his gentle southern constitution crumble at the hands of those old wolverines," the King’s brother said into the King’s ear when they brought Jonathan before his sovereign lord and master, surrounded by guards like he was a man full grown and not a young child.

Jonathan had heard of the Aux Valeria as any child who knew of Firmament’s history and legends did. But he also knew they were much diminished, a starving shadow of their former selves, banished by military engines and ballistae and the spread of light tempered steel over their own heavy iron blades.

They expect him to die. To rot. They are removing him from the chess board, either as a hostage against his parents or to stop him from what he might one day become. What Jonathan doesn’t know is why.

All he knows is if they want him to die, he’s going to do his damned best to survive.

The northern mountains do not kill him. The Aux Valeria cannot break him. When war breaks out along the eastern border and he is attached to a company in every least-defensible position, he does not fall. He has learned, by now, that whatever sins are attached to the name of Toews, they are not so great that his king can kill him outright. But whatever they are, they’re enough to keep him trying.

He earns his Knighthood on his 18th birthday and his own command by his 20th. Firmament is a parody of itself, torn apart by factioning, but growing ever larger, swallowing the land around it, and growing itself enemies on every front. Not even the King can deny Jonathan what is his by right when the borders need holding.

The people are starving, their lives uprooted and upended by the petty jealousies of their overlords, and all Jonathan knows how to do is survive. To walk through the hell of the battlefield and come out whole, dragging all of his men behind. He sees this desolation, imagines the beating heart of his home that he has never been allowed to return to, and cannot imagine how to fix it.

Until he meets Patrick.

*

Jonathan is miserable at court functions. He’s too aware of the shadowy adversaries allied against him in every corner. Perhaps it’s madness to feel safer running the proverbial gauntlet behind enemy lines then in these opulent halls, perhaps his fears are imagined.

He does not think so.

Sir Jonathan of the _Mare Agrorum_ they call him in mockery, a corruption on his distant forebear’s name for those tranquil flatlands, _Mare Desiderii_ (the sea of dreams), he called home for only six short years. His lands provide him no wealth, not like the spoiled tips and toffs he could call brothers-in-arms, and he is further prevented from sending any percentage of his own spoils back. Keep it or forfeit it to the crown, they said, knowing the punishment of sitting on all those riches, unable to provide for his family and their tenants would strike truer than any lash.

He has found ways over the years, the old wolverines in their frozen mountains were not completely without use, but it is not enough, and he fears the reprisals that may result for everybody involved to try it more than a few desperate times. 

He is without influence here. It is both vulgar and dangerous to associate with him too closely, he knows this, and he has never attempted to ingratiate himself amid their ranks. But neither has he sought trouble.

Not like Patrick.

He sees him for the first time in the dueling halls, a wizard with the light rapiers of pearlite matrix steel coming out of the east. He has heard the rumors about him, the louche fool who is the last lineal descendent of the High Blood, the last true heir to the deposed kings of old. The tales of Patrick’s drinking and whoring and merry good-humor have reached Jonathan even over the crowded fields of war.

He is not laughing now, his face concentrated as he manipulates the blade as easily as he might breathe or blink. 

"What’s this about?" Jonathan asks his squire, the poor unfortunate from the House of Saad that was lowly enough to be shackled to him and his sinking ship.

"Boros, the miserable bastard Kane is fighting, struck his squire to the ground, and then again when he tried to rise. Kane interfered, Boros challenged him, and it is as you see now."

"Are they fighting to first blood?"

Brandon looks pensive. “I don’t know, sir.”

First blood comes with a brutally efficient slice across Boros’s upper arm, but Boros does not cede. The idiot. Anybody could see he is hopelessly outmatched despite Kane’s smaller size and shorter reach.

There are cheers and bets going up and down the whole gallery, but when Kane kicks Boros’s feet out from under him, it grows silent and still as death.

"You cheat," Boros bites out, red-faced with anger.

"Do I?" Kane replies mildly, but there’s a startling rage simmering behind those eyes. The right of death is his and he’d certainly be allowed to avail himself of it. He taps Boros’s chin with the sword lifting it so that Boros has to scramble crablike so as not to slice himself clean through the throat.

Jonathan knows instantly that Kane will kill him, here, in front of all these eyes. He will damn his already tenuous position, how little he may care for it.

Jonathan barely notices crossing the floor and stopping Kane’s wrist before it can raise for the strike. “Your presence is requested urgently elsewhere, my lord,” he says, loudly enough for the entire long hall to hear.

"Really?" he asks in an unconcerned drawl as Jonathan tightens the grip on his wrist so much the sword finally goes slack in his hand. Jonathan feels the exact moment the lust for blood goes out of him and he lets his hand relax. Kane turns, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "Well then, lead on."

Brandon scrambles to open a door for them as they walk away from the flat canvas of the dueling strip and activity resumes behind them, along with Boros’s angry cursing. Jonathan jerks his head at him, a sign to make himself scarce and Brandon nods.

As soon as they’re in the sunlight of a quiet courtyard, Kane whirls upon him, the naked blade in his hand.

He cries, “that anybody should have the audacity—” and goes to strike Jonathan with the flat of it. But Jonathan’s skills were learned on the battleground not on the strip, and he steps in close, pretzelling Kane’s arm, shoving him back and twisting so that the edge lies against his own pulse, the hilt still in his hand.

Kane laughs and then shoulders him aside, correctly assessing that Jonathan won’t hurt him. He finally sheaths his sword, but there is still a red line on his neck from where Jonathan forced the blade against him. “So this is my rescuer,” he says, taking Jonathan in, recognizing him either from description or from the insignia pinned to his cloak. “Oh, it must set their teeth on edge to have you here, a wily fox in the henhouse. And I’m sure that old codger has never even told them why.”

"What do you mean?" Jonathan asks, assuming the codger Kaner talks about so dismissively is the King.

"Why, your family’s all spies and thieves, or they were, before _Aesa Maiesta's_ saintly father,” Kane says, teeth bared in a grin so false it looks painful as he jerks his head to the wing of the castle where the King’s apartment lies. “grew so afraid of them, he cut them down like daisies. But I’m not supposed to know that. And oops, neither are you.”

Jonathan steps back, thunderstruck into silence. Kane chuckles mirthlessly and then runs his eyes over Jonathan before biting out, “Don’t _ever_ interfere with me again.”

He storms off before Jonathan can ask him one of the thousand of questions bubbling up inside him. What does Kane know? What does Kane _know!_

*  
Patrick drinks a lot of ale, enough that despite his size, he is always the last one standing. Now though, despite several skins of wine, he feels as clear as bell. His companions are listing over, falling asleep in their seats. They’re sotted desperate revelers who don’t stop, because too much is never enough. Patrick sighs, and tips the dregs out of his cup onto the rush strewn floor. There will be no mercy found in drunkenness here tonight. If his mother was still alive she would have words for him. He always was a disappointment, a second chance gone horribly awry after their first born sickened and died before he was out of the nursery.

It fell to him too early to take up the mantle of his house and he hadn’t realized back then, immersed in girls and gaming, how much his parents had insulated him from the bitter truth of their situation. That their family had even survived long enough to see him born was little more than happy accident. If anything that came out of the Salic Wars could be termed “Happy.” Although, he imagines the people who won were overflowing with happiness. They’ve penned a lot of ballads crowing about it over the years.

It means little to Patrick, all that ambition seemed like a tremendous waste of energy. All it begat was death and more death, mostly to people who had never earned it. Patrick’s great grandmother had been High Queen for 31 short days before her reign, such as it was, was overthrown by her own cousin with four armies at his back. She capitulated, saw the husband she had married two weeks before, along with her entire household, executed, and was packed off to the Kane ancestral seat, bound never to leave it.

They hadn’t bargained that her belly was already full of child, they hadn’t bargained that Cathán, their first and best stronghold, built on a shelf of rock at the edge of the Uisce River Falls, could not be besieged. His forebears had lost their throne, but the soaring towers and buttresses of his dynasty remained unchallenged. A quiet uneasy peace grew out of it, and as long as they existed out of sight and out of mind, there way of life continued. They were allowed no soldiers and no swordscraft, every male heir was hauled before the king on 12th birthday to swear fealty at the King’s feet, and that was the end of it.

He had trusted in that fairytale far too much, and it wasn’t until he was left with three unmarried sisters, acres of water-logged land, and no allies to speak of, that he really understood what it meant to be of The Blood.

Really, the whole thing should be thrice damned to hell. Patrick was good fun, he was good looking, and he was rich. He wished that could be all it was. That he did not have to sleep with a knife under his pillow or drink and sup only after everybody else had had a bite first. He wished a good portion of his wealth didn’t go to hiring guards paid too handsomely to be bought to watch his sisters, and he wished that he trusted more than one person who was not kin in the entire world. It was too bad about that.

He’d never paid attention to Sir Jonathan. He’d heard of the lad, it was rare to find a family more hated than his own. And of course, there were many who considered him a noisome upstart, daring first to try for his knighthood and second to a command in the King’s own army.

The courtiers who make the August Palace their home are not kind to Jonathan, Patrick notes. But the border lords, the ones whose blockade lines were lifted by Jonathan’s forces after Firmament was attacked first by the An Cróga and then by the Glass Eaters of the Durine Drell are different. It is not safe to associate too closely with him. The King only grows more capricious with age, and his brother has a cruel streak as wide as a river. But if you watch closely, you can see the dipped heads and the grateful nods. Jonathan doesn’t even seem to notice.

“Another?” Lord Patrick Sharp asks him, taking a swallow out of the skin and then handing it over.

Patrick doesn’t bother to fill his cup, but drinks directly from the skin as Sharp did. Swallowing too much when Sharp knocks his hand up so that it all goes rushing into his mouth in a solid stream that makes him splutter and cough.

He shoves Sharp away. “Devil take you, Sharpy.”

Sharp laughs uproariously.

“It’s too bad you really are a bastard,” Patrick grumbles, “figures, that.”

“Guilty,” Sharp says, not even bothering to hide his mirthful grin.

Patrick goes to shove him again, but Sharp stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “Shh,” he says, putting a finger to his lips. When Patrick raises his brows, he points to the other side of the tavern.

“I ain’t never seen nothing like it,” a deep-voiced man with shoulders as wide as the tavern door is saying. “Youngest commander by half, untrained men, worst position on the field, no provisions, and the lad somehow pulls one out. Won the war that day, he did. Ain’t never seen nothing like it.”

“Something’s not right with him,” a skinny whip of a man says, face rat-like and cruelly shrewd. “The way he goes about, dressed all in black, like a bloody wraith, even his gloves are made of black kid. Sold his soul to the devil, that one did.”

Patrick snorts. Dressed all in black - he could only mean Sir Jonathan. Patrick had marked it, that day outside the dueling hall, the black boots, breeches, and doublet, all of exceptionally fine quality, but all an unfashionable black. He’d looked dour as a raven, Patrick thought, but not particularly devilish.

The tales come fast and thick after that, everybody seems to have heard of some heroic and fantastical exploit or some other time that he was caught sacrificing virgins to the moon. All nonsense, Patrick is quite sure.

“I’ve had my fill of this place,” Patrick says gruffly, climbing up out of his chair.

Sharp shoots him an unreadable look, but after a moment shrugs and agrees to leave easily enough. They leave their companions behind drunkenly arguing over cheating at dice. Patrick keeps his hand on the hilt of his sword the entire long meandering walk out of the seedy underbelly of The Slip, and back into the wide cobbled streets of the Old Town, where Patrick’s heavily fortified townhouse sits carefully on the most fashionable square. Sharp is the only person in the world who does not look at Patrick’s hand on his sword and laugh it off for derangement.

“I heard you met him,” Sharp says, after two furlongs of amiable silence.

“Met him is hardly the right word,” Patrick replies. “But yes, I certainly have laid eyes on him.”

“Sounded like rather more than that,” Sharp replies, voice deceptively mild.

Patrick shrugs and says dispassionately, “that Midden-Brained fool deserved it.”

Sharp sighs. “I’m not talking about Boros.”

“Don’t know what you are talking about then,” Patrick says cheerily, quickening his pace.

Sharp rolls his eyes at him, but he lets the subject drop. 

*

Patrick quits the Capital not long after that. It’s getting too exhausting, and he doesn’t like the way he keeps seeing blasted Sir Jonathan Toews everywhere he goes. Sharp claims he’s here rallying for more troops for Terra Deorum, an area along the weak western flank of the Firmament. The borders there have shifted back and forth for centuries and the people who remain have been hammered badly, caught between two sovereign nations. It’s a losing battle, and Jonathan was no doubt assigned command there because the position was entirely untenable.

Patrick doesn’t know why he’s even trying on that lost cause. The King has set his eyes on the mountains controlled by the Durine Drell, for the rich veins of iron ore and chalcopyrite that thread the forbidding cliffs. Jonathan’s unlikely to get a single assis for Terra Deorum, which supplies little beyond the cheap pine that can be found in every wooded copse and spit of forest in the Kingdom.

Patrick leaves before first light a few days after the spring equinox. He takes only a handful of retainers, his sisters, and his old Master-at-Arms, Savard, heading up a retinue of guardsmen. He’s betting that the erratical nature of the move will keep him safe. He bets wrong.

They’re beset on the Long Track only a few hours after the morning chill has burned off. It’s chaos then, hemmed in by the trees. They chose their spot well. He loses two guardsmen, his sisters’ long-serving chaperone, and a groom in the span of a minute. His murderers are indiscriminate in who they kill to get to him.

One of the horses spooks and bolts, wheeling pell mell into his own mount. He doesn’t even realize that he’s fallen, until he’s hit the ground, head jouncing uncomfortably, air forced from his lungs in a desperate gasp, and left leg trapped below the body of his faithful steed. The guardsmen, along with Savard, shouting desperate orders the whole while, do their best to form a circle around him and the coach with his sisters inside, but it’s no good, there are simply too many for their own numbers to hold off.

Well, Patrick thinks, furiously struggling under the weight of his horse and trying to work his knife out of his belt with sweat-slicked hands, it really is something that he managed to last this long. It’s just too bad that so many others are going to have to die, just so a man in a high tower can have sweet peaceful dreams in his bed, crown upon his head.

There’s screaming, lots of it, from the horses, from his own people, from the assassins masquerading as bandits - somehow he still hears the whisper zing of the first arrow as it buries itself in an oncoming attacker’s chest. He strains, craning his neck to catch sight of this fortuitous rescuer.

Two more die before the archer even becomes visible to Patrick - a shadow all in black, lining up arrow after arrow on a recurved bow to kill people with a calm precision. One pierces a throat, another an eye. He’s knocking each arrow so fast, Patrick’s attackers don’t even have time to respond.

Hysterically, the first thought that comes to him is not ‘what the devil is Sir Jonathan doing on the road to the Uisce River?’ but rather what is Jonathan doing with a peasant weapon? He didn’t know any noble sons who would bother to learn one.

The remaining bandits finally give up and wheel off to lick their wounds, leaving their dead behind and Patrick sick with relief. He swallows and realizes with a horrible rush he really wasn’t ready to die at all. And his sisters, god his sisters. If he strains he can see the coach, his sisters haven’t come out of it, all is quiet. They could be hurt. They could be dead. An eternity passes filled with Patrick’s dread and guilt for being so careless, before Jonathan appears above him.

“My sisters!” he says, ragged and frantic

“They’re unharmed, I told them to stay in the carriage” Jonathan replies, barely glancing at him in favor of his prize Percheron, Lionheart. The horse struggles desperately to get his feet under him and lift himself off of Patrick’s pinned right leg, but weak or injured, Lionheart cannot rise. Jonathan kneels beside him, inspecting Lionheart where Patrick cannot see.

“He has a broken leg. Bad,” Jonathan says, catching Lionheart’s muzzle between his black-gloved palms, and gentling him with a soft murmur of praise, stroking him from his forehead to the velvety tip of his nose. “He won’t walk again.”

“Do it then,” Patrick says, knowing what Jonathan is trying to say, shamefaced as tears prick his eyes.

It’s fast. Jonathan draws the knife across Lionheart’s throat, smooth and economical, and holds his horse, covering his eyes, as he bleeds out and gradually becomes still.

“Patrick?” his sister Erica calls. Patrick takes in his dead horse lying across him, the mess of bodies, Savard’s lifeless eyes staring at the sky. Not a single one of his servants are still breathing.

“Don’t, don’t come out of the carriage,” he yells back, hoping she doesn’t notice the break in his voice. They don’t need to see this.

Patrick meets Jonathan’s eyes and nods, and finally Jonathan gets to his feet and helps roll Lionheart off of his leg. It’s strangely easy now that he’s only a corpse, or carcass, Patrick supposes. He swallows and has to look away.

As his leg is freed, sensation rushes into it with a blaze of pain and he has to bite back on a shameful cry of distress. He doesn’t think it’s broken, but by all the gods, everything from the thigh down is not happy with him. It’s a supreme act of will to get himself into a sitting position against the trunk of a tree, Jonathan staring down at him the entire time.

“My lord,” somebody calls, frantic and worried, galloping into the clearing on a large warhorse. It’s Jonathan’s squire, Patrick doesn’t know his name. “My lord, Keith’s and a detachment of Excubitors are behind me.”

“Too late I’m afraid,” Jonathan tells him as the squire leaps down from the horse and hands the reins off to him. It’s only then that Patrick realizes that Jonathan had arrived in the clearing on foot. The charger must belong to him and he must’ve sent the squire back to his men to fetch help and then had the temerity to continue on alone. It’s totally lunatic, there were at least 20 men in that raiding party.

“How did you know?” Patrick asks, trying not to think about the throbbing agony of his leg.

When Jonathan doesn’t answer, the squire says, “We were on the bluff, we saw them coming.”

“I thought…I thought you were still in the Capital,” Patrick replies.

Jonathan shrugs. “You thought wrong.”

Patrick rolls his eyes and attempts to stand. He has to check on his sisters, make sure they’re alright.

He passes out. 

*

He expected nothing in payment. He didn’t save Kane’s life for the life debt Kane would owe him. But Kane nevertheless seems to feel there is one.

He returns to Terra Deorum, and forgets about Kane’s pain-paled face and the stolid look in his eyes. They’re thin on the ground out here, the border lords can supply only a few armsmen and little else. The only advantage they have in this fight is that they know the lay of the land, for the spring rains do not deter the enemy in the slightest.

He needs bodies—strong competent fighters, not the stripling lads they keep sending him who die fast and easy. But they’re cut off out here, and under-supplied on top of it.

Every morning, Jonathan goes over reports with the quartermaster and does his best to keep his head. At least there are so many trees on the ground they will never want for arrows.

A month goes by and then the provisions arrive. Oilskins to keep the damp out, foodstuffs to replace their dampened hardtack and saltpork only inches away from going to rot, boots and better steel for the men, a brace of fresh horses, and far too many barrels of strong ale stamped with the Kane arms.

When the two light and high-sprung trebuchets are trundled into camp on mule-driven carts, he has to laugh. It must have been a nightmare to drag them through the mud.

"Sir?" Saad asks, looking at the ballistae uncertainly.

It’s irregular warfare out here, hit-and-run mobility tactics and skirmishing, the only way they can fight against a superior force. The trebuchets are useless in these woods.

Jonathan laughs harder. “At least Kane has a head for siege-craft.”

It would be helpful if there was anything for them to beset.

His men stare at him as he scrubs mirthful tears from his eyes.

Keith, coming out of his tent to check out the commotion, stops and looks around the camp and it’s many stacks of crates and barrels. He clears his throat. “Well, it looks like we’ll eat well tonight.”

Jonathan nods at him and Keith starts barking orders to get the supplies stowed away before the rains ruin them. The men who delivered the supplies stand shiftless and uncertain.

"Nobody expects you to remain," Jonathan tells a big man at the head of the carts that he assumes is in charge.

"No, nobody expects it," he replies. "I would stay anyway."

"What’s your name?" Jonathan asks.

"Bollig, milord."

Bollig. A Diis surname. He scans the other laborers and notes their firmed jaws.

"We are losing," he explains gently. There is nobody in camp who would say otherwise. Those who remain with him are foolhardy and crazy, as he himself is foolhardy and crazy.

"This is our home," Bollig says.

And truly, that is answer enough.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's more not!fic musings on this in the tumblr tag [Anatomy of the Sword](http://the4freedoms.tumblr.com/tagged/anatomy-of-the-sword/chrono)


	16. You Must Be This Tall To Get On This Ride (April 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m stretching reason and sense in this one. Patrick’s at SSM in the middle school in 7th grade, while Jonny’s in the upper school doing whatever weirdness that got him into college a year ahead of me even though we were both born in first half of 88. And alright, alright, anons. You win. I’m spelling it Jonny.
> 
> (I have no idea if the middle school even accepts boarders. Whatever, that’s more research than I’m willing to do for this thing. If they did they’d be well segregated from the older kids, but again, stretching reason and sense.)

Patrick’s had crushes before, but not like this, never like this. Not ones that make him shaky and breathless. Not ones that make him pause over every word that comes out of his mouth. Jonny’s so fast up and down the ice. His passes and shots are so clean and precise it always seems like an extra half-second of time goes by when the puck hits his blade. Like he’s making it slow down, just so he can get it exactly where he wants it. Patrick’s seen good hockey. He’s seen lots of good hockey, but nothing that made his chest ache and want so desperately to just touch that person.

Jonny actually takes the time to listen to Patrick and he doesn’t, well he doesn’t treat Patrick like a stupid kid. He laughs at Patrick’s lame jokes and is always willing to stay behind to work on things with him. But he’s leaving soon. First it’ll be summer, and then Jonny’s going to college, he won’t be coming back. And everything about that makes Patrick hurt, the thought of another five years here without him. Well it isn’t fair.

Jonny’s really popular. He’s good in school. And he’s out. He’s out like it’s the easiest thing in the world and not something that makes Patrick a little terrified even though he’s sure he likes girls as well as boys, and wouldn’t ever really have to tell anybody about the latter. Patrick wants to know everything about him. His favorite band, his favorite movie, his favorite place, how he feels about basketball, and cherry Pepsi, and Nintendo 64 and even garbage like politics. He calls Patrick Peekaboo, and even though the nickname sucks and it’s super embarrasing, Patrick never minds when Jonny says it.

And that’s why Patrick’s got to tell him he loves him, before Jonny’s gone and it’s too late.

Patrick decides on a Friday night after the Gaming club meeting gets out. He’s not sure what it is, but he realizes, walking by himself back to his dorm, it’s got to be now.

When he swings by Jonny’s dorm, he isn’t there, but Johnny always leaves the door to his single unlocked. He’s got nothing to steal he claims, and he doesn’t seem to mind when people drop in on him. His room is a mess, the one thing about him that isn’t neat and perfect, but his bed is made, and it’s soft and inviting. Patrick’s sat on it a few times, watching tape on Jonny’s tiny TV and going over plays. He likes the fact that Jonny takes his opinions seriously and listens to what Patrick has to say.

Patrick pats the covers and then awkwardly settles himself on it, hoping Jonny won’t mind. It’s a Wednesday school night, so Jonny can’t be far, wherever he is.

He doesn’t have to wait long. The door opens, the sounds of the hallway spilling in from outside. Jonny’s back and joking with somebody on the other side of his door from the sound of it. After a moment Patrick hears Jonny laugh and tell whoever to fuck off, and then the door opens all the way.

Patrick swallows, face flaming up. Jonny must have been in the showers, because he’s got a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair is wet and curling on his forehead.

He blinks when he sees Patrick. “Peeks,” he says, stepping all the way inside and shutting the door inside. “What’s up, buddy?”

Patrick blushes harder and clears his throat. “I—I—just,” he nearly swallows his tongue when Jonny turns his back to him and just drops his towel like it doesn’t even matter that Patrick’s in the room with him. And why should it. Patrick should know, he’s been in and out of locker rooms his entire life. He averts his eyes as Jonny pulls on boxers.

"You okay?" Jonny asks, throwing himself into his deck chair. He runs a hand through his wet hair and then makes a face. He looks so good, chest and abs defined. Patrick wonders if he’ll look like that at seventeen. The height trajectory his doctor gave his parents certainly wasn’t very promising.

Patrick feels like he’s swallowed his tongue. He doesn’t know what to say or do or how to get it out. In the moment, it just seems easier to climb down from Jonny’s bed and kiss him.

He misjudges the distance and ends up knocking their mouths together with a horrible clack. There’s no chance to try again, because Jonny jerks back, hands on Patrick’s hips to hold him away. It’s a mess, but the only coherent thought in his head is that Jonny smells so good.

"Whoa, Patrick," Jonny says, now thoroughly red himself. "What’s this about?"

"Sorry, sorry," Patrick says miserably. "I just…I love you. I know I’m little and I may never play hockey as good as you, but I do."

He thinks he might cry.

"Peeks…" Jonny says gently and somehow that just makes everything worse. He has to turn away, his eyes are prickling so hard. He fists his hands, trying to focus on his nails biting into the skin. Don’t cry, don’t cry, he says to himself over and over.

"Oh, hey, no," Jonny says, getting out of the chair to stand next to him. He puts his hands on Patrick’s shoulders and ducks his head so that Patrick is forced to meet his eyes. "You’re so young, Peeks. You haven’t even really figured any of this out yet."

"That’s not true!" Patrick replies fiercely. "I do know!"

Jonny smiles at him. “I’m really, really flattered that you like me. You’re amazing, you know that? I know guys in juniors who can’t do the shit you can do with a puck. You’re going to do great things and some day you’re going to sweep somebody right off their feet.”

The tears really do start running then, slow fat ones that burn his eyes, he’s trying that hard to keep them in. Jonny tilts his face up and wipes his eyes with his thumbs, and he looks so good and so worried and so kind that it only makes Patrick cry harder.

"Aww, Peeks," Jonny sighs and tugs him in for a hug. Patrick can’t even enjoy the fact that his cheek is pressed to Jonny’s bare chest, arms tight around him. This is the end of the world. The absolute end of the world. He never should have said anything. How the hell is he going to look at Jonny after this?

After a while he finally runs out of tears, hiccuping weakly, nose running. Jonny hands him a wadded up bunch of tissues to wipe his face with and then settles back into his desk chair. “We gonna be okay?” he asks. Patrick’s chest pangs at the way he sounds genuinely concerned. He’s not sure why it even matters now.

Johnny doesn’t want him.

_Five years later..._

It’s echo-y and dark in the locker room, Patrick’s the first one there. Small surprise. It’s early in the morning with the sky a dark pre-dawn grey and a good 45 minutes before practice is due to start. Mr. Bowman offered him a ride, but Patrick had wanted to make his way to the rink himself, figure out the best way to do it by public transportation. The contract he signed in July guarantees him more money than he ever expected to see. It’s certainly enough that he could buy a car, but it’s such a lasting and huge purchase, it frightens him a little bit.

It’s a shock to see his stall made up, name at the top. You can know that your entire life is heading here, and still not really be able to imagine everything that means. He puts his gear bag down in front of it almost reverentially.

When the doors to the locker room clatter open a few minutes later, lights flicking on across the room with a buzz, he stops, feeling caught out like a kid somewhere he’s not supposed to be.

He nearly swallows his tongue when he sees who it is.

Jonny walks into the locker room, in jeans and a slick leather jacket, gear bag of his own slung over his shoulder. He smiles when he sees Patrick standing there, the exact same one that used to punch Patrick in the gut when he was only twelve years old. He’s not anymore immune to it now than he was then.

“Hey, Peeks,” Jonny says, like he’s running into Patrick in the halls of Shattuck, like the last six years have never even passed.

“Uh…hi,” Patrick says, swallowing.

He looks away when Jonny goes to his stall and tugs off his leather jacket, but not fast enough that Patrick doesn’t see the white t-shirt he’s wearing pull tight over the thick muscles in his back.

Jonny is a big guy, Patrick realizes. He’d seen footage of him obviously—it was kind of hard to miss the second youngest captain in the NHL over the last couple of years—but it was hard to tell just how big he was under the Blackhawk’s red and all the pads. He’d still sort of pictured that slender doe-eyed kid in his head, not the broad-shouldered narrow hipped twenty-something currently making his stomach fizz.

“You okay?” Jonny asks. When Patrick looks back at him, he finds Jonny paused in the middle of dressing, staring at him in concern.

Patrick clears his throat and nods. “Yeah, yeah…just thinking. It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah, it has,” Jonny replies with another one of those soft smiles Patrick remembers so well.

His cheeks flame up and he drops his eyes down to his feet. “What are the odds?”

He’d wondered as much. Once the shock of actually going first had passed, the knowledge that he was going to be playing for the team Jonny captained had shook him up good. Patrick had liked people, he’d slept with people, he’d thought he’d moved on. But that first moment, when he realized he was going to be in a locker room with Jonathan Toews, the crazy elation he’d felt had scared the shit out of him. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about it since then, not through prospect camp, not through contract negotiations, none of it.

The doors burst open and the veterans start filtering in. They call fond hellos to Jonny and nod at Patrick when they see him. He gets caught up in introductions, shaking people’s hands, looking at pictures of their kids they’ve got in their wallets. He knows all of their names already and they know his, but everybody makes nice and pretends like they have no idea.

After it’s over, Jonny is already suited up, skates laced and helmet on. He nudges Patrick’s shoulder as he passes. “I’m glad,” he says, voice warm, and then he’s gone, already out to hit the ice.

Patrick sinks back down to the bench.

How could that smile just erase six years and put Patrick right back to where he’d been in the seventh grade, heart pounding and palms sweaty, doing his best to spend whatever time possible with Jonny? 

*

Patrick’s first couple of practices playing on a line with Lang and Williams don’t give him a lot of hope that he won’t be sent back to juniors. Scrimmage ends with Williams grabbing the unsnapped strap of his helmet and shouting at him to “quit playing the fucking perimeter.”

Patrick shoves him, hard, knocking him back a step, leveling him with a stare. His whole life he’s been dealing with chirps about his size. Williams can go fuck himself. “You gonna tell me again I’m not up for it?”

Williams pops out his mouth guard and then pops it back in with an audible click. He bares his teeth around it. “You’re alright, kid.”

“Yeah? Fuck off.”

Williams laughs. Patrick shrugs and goes to skate off for a drill. When he scans the rink, he finds Jonny leaning up against the boards casually, paying more attention to Patrick than to Vandermeer and Seabrook who are talking at him, caught in some animated discussion. When Patrick spots him, he smiles.

Things get better after that. Savard slots him in on a line with Jonny and Ruutu in his third practice, and is pleased enough with the results that he does it again during the pre-season. Patrick wonders if Jonny made that happen. He’s not sure how he feels about that, but playing wing on that line is like getting back on a bike and learning he still knows how to ride.

When the press start talking about Jonny and Tuomo’s diligent backchecking making up for Patrick’s lack of defensive capabilities, he does his best to shrug it off. He knows his limitations, he also knows they’re gonna keep doubting him until he shows them otherwise. Patrick’s only ever got this far, because he’s always known exactly how much he has to earn to afford his place. Jonny taught him that.

He determinedly doesn’t think about it.

In the St. Louis game, Stempniak checks him hard, sending him to his knees. It’s dizzying and Patrick takes a little while to get back up. He’d better get used to it, because Stempniak’s only 196 pounds. Jonny’s got nearly twenty on him, and he’s not even the biggest. A shift later, Jonny makes those twenty pounds count when he hits Stempniak just over the blue line, knocking him off his feet. It’s questionable, everybody knows it, but when Patrick makes eye contact with Jonny he merely nods, and Patrick knows Jonny’ll do it again if he feels he needs to. It makes him blush horrifically bright. It shouldn’t make his gut warm and his breath come fast, but it does.

At the end of it they only win 3 of the 7 games, but Patrick feels good about the way they’re playing. Everybody who goes high in the draft knows they’re going to end up playing for a disaster, at least for a little while, if they’re going through a successful rebuilding. Jonny went third, and he’s played beautifully and hasn’t been able to lift his team out of the bottom third. Patrick knows this, but he’s also started to believe they can turn this shit around.

His first game could’ve gone better. They play solid hockey, but it doesn’t matter. Backstrom is too much for them and the Wild’s one goal wins them the night. Patrick takes it hard when he attempts to tie it up with a minute left in regulation, only to be rebuffed at the line. Afterwards, in the locker room, just as he’s going over what he could’ve done better, Sharp comes over and thumps him on the shoulder.

“I don’t think you’re going back to juniors, kid,” he says, flashing a brilliant smile.

Patrick looks up at him and shrugs. If that happens, well, he’ll deal with it.

They go out in St. Paul afterwards. Burs finds a dingy pub that won’t blink if one of the beers in the first round goes to a minor. It’s a Twins bar, so they won’t have to worry about assholes coming up to the large table they’ve commandeered, chirping them about the loss.

Wisniewski comes back from a trip to the bar with a pitcher of Heineken and bunch of cups, but when Seabrook goes to hand Patrick one, he stops him.

“Ah ah ah,” he says, “we got something special for the rookie.”

Blunden’s hard on Wiz’s tail, and he sets a huge balloon glass, swimming with hot pink slush, with a bunch of umbrellas festooning the edges, in front of Patrick.

“What…is it?” he asks.

Wiz laughs. “That, rookie, is a sexy lady, I wish you the joy of her, because it’s the only one you’re getting tonight.”

Patrick takes it in stride and tastes it. He doesn’t care what he looks like sipping on the tiny red straw. The thing tastes like vodka and cotton candy. He kind of likes it.

“Oh lord, there he goes,” Seabs says, pausing in the middle of a conversation to nudge Sharp and Keith.

Patrick looks up and follows his gaze to the bar where Jonny’s talking to a guy in a Minnesota State hoodie. “What?”

They all watch Jonny say something that makes the other guy grin and duck his head. Sharpy hoots with laughter. “Ten bucks says they’re out of here in twenty.”

“Twenty? Surprisingly conservative,” Bur says, chin on his fist, “I give it ten.”

Twelve minutes and 14 seconds later, Jonny leaves with Minnesota State guy, and Bur holds out his hand to Sharpy, claiming the over/under. Sharpy grudgingly forks over two crumpled fives.

“Your face, kid,” Sharp says to Patrick as he’s sliding his wallet back into his pants.

“Don’t worry about it, Jonny’s cool, in spite of the…you know,” Barker says.

“The ‘you know?’” Bur says, socking his shoulder. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I know,” Patrick says, face flaming up again. “He was out in high school.”

They all stare at him and for one horrifying moment, he wonders if Jonny said something about that horrible night. That would be just his fucking luck. Then Seabs blinks and says, “Oh, that’s right, you would’ve been at Shattuck at the same time.”

They didn’t put it together, he realizes, nodding dumbly. He takes another sip of his horrendous pink drink. This time it doesn’t taste sweet anymore, just thick and cloying.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s jealous. He hadn’t thought about Jonny very seriously for years. His horrifying crush had just existed in the dusty corners of old memories, a thing that he used to feel. But now it’s real again and god, in the five years since then, there’s never been anybody else to make him feel like this. Playing with Jonny the way he used to dream of, getting all his razor sharp passes, making opportunities out of thin air only makes it worse. And in all the other ways, Jonny is just the way he used to be—considerate, self-deprecating, and slightly goofy, but also so fucking confident and unshakeable. He’s not rattled at all by the fact that he’s been captain a losing team for four years, and they’ve pinned all their hopes on a small forward he used to play shinny with. It doesn’t help that Patrick still finds him so goddamn attractive.

He prays like hell he can get through it all, because he’s not sure how he’s going to survive playing on a line with him for an entire season if all he wants to do is touch him all the goddamn time.

*

The next morning on the short flight back to Chicago, the guys rib Jonny about it.

Jonny pretends he isn’t listening, refusing to look up from an issue of Vman, but when Seabs suddenly asks, “Was this one straight?” he puts the magazine down and then shrugs loosely, spreading his thighs a little and sinking back down into his seat, the perfect picture of insouciant grace.

“What?” Patrick asks. He seems to be saying that a lot lately.

Sharpy, who’d taken the seat next to him, laughs. “It doesn’t matter whether or not they like dick, Jonny can pull ‘em. They may not like dick, but they like Toews-dick.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Jonny calls back.

“I only wish, brother, I only wish,” Sharpy replies. He drops his voice to talk to Patrick. “It’s ludicrous, some sort of demonic skill he’s got. You pick the straightest man in a bar and he can hook ‘em like you wouldn’t believe.”

Patrick clears his throat and looks away.

“Peeks knows better than to listen to your bullshit,” Jonny says over his shoulder. It’s the first time he’s used the nickname in public.

“Peeks?” Sharp asks.

“Peekaboo,” Jonny replies, rotating around so that he can look at them. “That’s what we called him in school.”

Patrick groans. “Thanks, Captain Asshole.”

Jonny salutes him with his magazine and that devastating grin. “My pleasure.”

Patrick sighs. He hates that nickname. But he hates the way he’ll never hate the way Jonny says it even more.

*

The front door of Jonny’s condo swings open under his hand. He _had_ knocked when he stopped by unannounced as a favor to Sharpy, dropping off some books Jonny had asked for. It’s early days still and the hazing isn’t fierce, but he is being run through his paces. Patrick goes cold when the door swings opens like it was never completely closed.

Maybe…maybe something is wrong. Anybody could just walk in, fuck, maybe they had.

"Hello?" he calls. "Tazer?"

It’s strange using the nickname, but he feels like he needs to impose the distance between them or he’ll spontaneously combust one day when Jonny just looks at him.

He breathes a sigh of relief when he hears Jonny’s laughter coming from the bedroom. Ah, good, so he’s here then. Here and alive and like, breathing. The door to his room is ajar and the sound of soft conversation drifts through.

Patrick’s just gearing up to apologize for dropping in on him, setting the books down on Jonny’s dining table when he hears a soft moan. He knows what that moan means. He knows he should turn around and walk right out of there, probably take the books with him so that Jonny never knows he was there. He slows to a halt, but it’s steps too late, because now he’s at the perfect angle to see straight to the bed through the door that Jonny has left ajar. Almost like he fucking wants to show this to Patrick.

He’s confronted with Jonny’s broad, beautiful back, the cut muscles that run from shoulders down through his thighs, the perfectly delineated ass cheeks that are some how just as gold as the rest of his skin. Like Jonny just soaks in the sun. Patrick’s seen it before. Jonny’s not shy around the locker room, never has been. But he’s never seen it like this.

The guy he’s stretched out over, clutching at Jonny’s waist is big, not some lithe little twink, but a cornfed fratboy, broad and taller even than Jonny. There’s a celtic knotwork tattoo curling around one bicep, but that aside he’s got a sort of blonde and wholesome look going for him. Jonny’s type he’s beginning to realize.

"Lemme fuck you," Jonny says. Patrick can’t see between their bodies, but he imagines, watching the way the guy’s head tips back on his neck, that he’s running his dick between his ass cheeks, parting them, driving the head of his dick over and over the guys hole. Patrick shudders a little.

The guy groans, desperate and sharp, but he says, “I don’t know,” breathily in way that signals that no is much closer to a yes. Jonny does something between them and the guy moans again. Patrick swallows hard, feeling shaky and uncomfortable and yelling in his own head TO TURN THE FUCK AROUND. God god god, why won’t his feet fucking move?

Jonny kisses the guy then. He kisses him like he owns him. Like he knows exactly what this guy wants, but it doesn’t fucking matter because Jonny’s taking what he needs. He bites at the guys throat, leaving a trail of marks that bloom red before fading, and then, punctuating it with a hard slap to the guy’s thigh, he repeats, “Lemme fuck you.”

Patrick goes achingly hard in his pants. He’s not entirely certain how he’s keeping himself upright when Jonny uses that tone of voice.

The guy breathes in and out for a moment. The only sound in the space. Jonny waits above him, patient, expression tranquil, like he doesn’t really give a fuck about the answer. Eventually the guy nods, sharp, eyes squeezed shut tight, face flushed so red from embarrassment. Jonny smiles, noses along the guys cheek and then fumbles at the dresser and Patrick hears the thick wet squelch of a tube of lube.

He’s careful about it, fingering him open slow. Patrick can’t see. He can’t do anything. He wants to leave, he’s screaming at himself to do it, but he stays still, so hard it hurts. This is his punishment, he thinks desperately. Watching as the guy starts moaning every time Jonny thrusts his fingers in, pushing back into it. Jonny whispers filth to him the whole way through it, talking about how his fingers feel inside him, how he’s gonna fuck him so good and hard, how he loves the way the guy gasps every time Jonny crooks his fingers. Patrick lets those words wash over him, imagines being pressed beneath Jonny as he exhaled those things into his ear, being fucked deep and hard, being fucked until he couldn’t take it anymore, until he had to tell Jonny to stop.

Patrick nearly cries out at the thought of it.

Jonny finally snaps a condom on and pushes inside. He’s not slow or gentle about it. He’s not babying this dude, he just fucking slams home, and the guy curls underneath him, back arching, hands flying up to the headboard. The cries that Jonny forces from his mouth—the neighbors can probably hear them they’re that loud.

Patrick wants to palm himself. He needs to ease the ache of his hard-on. But he doesn’t move. It wouldn’t—it wouldn’t be okay, getting off to Jonny fucking somebody else, standing just outside his bedroom door, frozen and overwhelmed with sick, thwarted desire. He should fucking leave.

Jonny does something, he doesn’t know what, because the guy starts saying, “Don’t stop, don’t fucking stop,” over and over like a litany. And Jonny laughs.

He fucking chuckles, like he’s not balls deep in some bro.

And that’s when Patrick can’t take it anymore. He hightails it out of there, face on fire, dignity in tatters. He doesn’t even realize until he’s riding the L back to the Bowman’s place that he left those fucking books on the table top.

*

The next day at practice, while they’re getting dressed, Jonny calls to Sharpy, “When did you stop by last night?”

"What?" Sharpy replies, distracted.

"The books?" Jonny says, eyebrows raised.

"Oh, I had Kaner drop ‘em off," Sharpy says, nodding at him.

Jonny looks at him and Patrick can’t help it. His face flames up bright and hot. Jonny blinks at him for a moment and then it must click in his head, because Jonny grins, this slow secretive thing, and then he shakes his head, looking away from Patrick. He doesn’t look embarrassed in the slightest.

Patrick doesn’t apologize even though he feels like he should. Especially now that watching Jonny change, muscles smoothly bunching and tightening as he bends over is superimposed with the image of his thighs working as he fucked that fratboy right out of his head.

Patrick wonders what he did wrong in his last life.

*

When Dale had first told Patrick he was road rooming with Jonny right before the first game of the season, Patrick had thought it was going to be a nightmare.

Dale had been very reasonable about it. “You two already know each other, and Jonathan says he doesn’t mind. You’re the youngest on the team and we think it would be good for you to have him around,” he’d explained.

Patrick wasn’t in any position to say Jonny might not have minded, but he sure as fuck minded. How the fuck was he going to sleep with Jonathan Toews swanning around, half-naked as he tended towards, in their shared hotel room? He’d stressed about it a lot leading up to that first game. More than he had the puck drop.

And then it looked like it wasn’t going to matter, because Jonny picked up every time they were on the road, only showing up early the next morning to shower and change. Havlat, who used to room with him, had told Patrick on the airplane that he was jealous Patrick was in with him now, because it was almost like having your own room, Jonny was so rarely there.

But then one night, after a good win and team dinner, where the boys had done their level best to get him fucked up, Jonny had actually taken a cab back with him.

Patrick’d crashed and burned at the bar earlier, much to everybody’s delight. She’d been pretty and really nice. Really, really nice even, but she’d also had a boyfriend. And what made it worse was the way the guy, who was definitely old enough to buy his own beer, unlike Patrick, had smiled when he’d come back from the bathroom and found Patrick chatting up his girlfriend.

“You’ve got good taste,” he’d said, knocking Patrick on the shoulder. “Sweet game tonight, hey?”

And Patrick’s face had flamed up. He muttered excuses and stumbled, embarrassed, away from the bar. It was so awkward and the entire team had witnessed all of it.

Patrick had drunk a lot more after that. Jonny packs him into the cab, and laughs as Patrick grouses about having no game. He’s only had sex twice since he started playing in the NHL, and both times, they’d been older and called Patrick adorable.

Jonny’s slouching comfortably next to him in back seat of the cab, thighs spread wide in his typical casual sprawl. He’s been listening very earnestly, saying all the right things, but Patrick could kill him when he grins and says, “But you _are_ adorable!”

“Fuck off,” Patrick replies, thumping his head against the window.

When they reach the hotel, Jonny pays the cab driver and shoos Patrick out of the car. Patrick’s still half-expecting Jonny to peel off and go wherever it is he goes when he decides to get his groove on, but he keeps with Patrick all the way to the elevator bank.

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?” Jonny says, still smiling, as the elevator doors part in front of them.

Patrick shrugs and steps on hurriedly so that Jonny can’t see his face. He’s drunk and he knows enough to realize that being drunk around Jonny is a very dangerous prospect. He seizes desperately on an excuse. “I dunno, man, you’re like…not going out to hook up?”

Jonny yawns and rolls his shoulders, reaching his arms up above his head to stretch. His shirt rides up, revealing a narrow strip of tanned flesh. Patrick runs his eyes over the visible line of his pelvic cut and bites his lower lip. Just those bare two inches disappearing into the waistband of his jeans makes Patrick feel hot and shivery.

“Not in the mood,” Jonny says, finally, unaware of Patrick’s internal struggle.

“I dunno how you do it, man,” Patrick says, softly. He glances up at the mirrored ceiling of the elevator and notes that even though they’re on other sides of the elevator, Patrick’s still got his whole body turned towards him. God, when is he going to get over this? He quickly faces the panel of buttons and only just avoids tripping.

“What, how do I hook up?” Jonny asks, amusement evident as they reach their floor. He waits for Patrick to exit in front of him.

Patrick shrugs. “No, like—what do you even say?” He shakes his head as he keys open the door to their room.

He thinks about it and this is really the first time they’ve come back to a hotel room together that isn’t for a pre-game nap.

He looks back at Jonny, waiting for his answer. Jonny shrugs. “I dunno, man. Whatever works.” 

Patrick sighs and Jonny shrugs, faux sheepishly and disappears into the bathroom.

Patrick’s settled into bed, watching TV when Jonny comes out in a pair of loose pajama bottoms and nothing else. In some ways, watching him move around the room, going through an evening routine that Patrick has never even gotten to see because he’s been so absent—it’s worse than Jonny in his briefs in the locker room, or the way Patrick has to fight not to look at the long lines of Jonny’s thickly muscled body when they’re in the showers.

Jonny sits on his bed, takes one look at his face, and says, “Still thinking about it?”

Patrick isn’t. Or at least, not about what Jonny thinks he’s thinking about. He turns the volume on the television down. “I have no game.”

Jonny chews at his lower lip thoughtfully. “I mean—who really does?”

Patrick raises his brows.

Jonny shakes his head “No, seriously, I just know what I want and then I ask for it.”

Patrick groans and tosses a pillow at him. Jonny catches it out of the air with a smirk, places it on top of his other pillows, and leans back on it like that’s what he intended for Patrick to do all along.

“What happened the first time you had sex?” Jonny asks, a little tentatively. 

Patrick blushes again and says a little too quickly, “It wasn’t like, a disaster or anything.”

Jonny stares at him. “No, I didn’t mean it like that—just the scenario.”

“Uh, well,” Patrick shifts in bed, uncomfortable recounting this story. “It was just before I left Shattuck for London—I dunno if you remember Allison Cohen, she was on the soccer team? A year above me?”

Jonny shakes his head. “Nope.”

“Yeah, well,” Patrick shrugs. “I guess she just decided she liked me one day. We started hanging out a lot, and then, one night, I think she was bored to be honest, and she just gave me a blowjob. And then two weeks later we started having sex.”

“Yeah? What happened there?” Jonny asks.

Patrick shrugs. “I dunno. I left for London, we stopped talking. I’m just—not good at taking the lead. Whenever I try to make something happen…” he trails off.

“Did you want something to happen there?” Jonny asks.

Patrick laughs, embarrassed. “No, it wasn’t like that. But, for the last three years, it’s been kind of a pattern. I mean, I don’t mind. It’s nice when people come to you.” It’s stupid. He doesn’t even know why it bothers him. Maybe just the fact that the people Patrick chooses for himself never seem to be interested back—including Jonny. Not that when that happened back then it could’ve possibly gone any other way. Patrick knows that. In some ways it makes it a million times more mortifying.

Jonny makes a considering noise. “I don’t think it’ll stay that way? I mean, you’re young, and most of the girls you get to meet are three to four years older, and that’s rough. I’m sure you’d be tearing it up at a college campus with all the coeds.”

Patrick snorts.

Jonny laughs ruefully. “I’m not blowing smoke. It takes time to figure that stuff out. I was a disaster when I first started. You’ve got no idea.”

Patrick looks at him, disbelieving. He saw Jonny in that bedroom. He’s not sure you can learn to do that. Watching it, right outside the room, it had felt like one of those things that you either are or you aren’t.

Jonny puts his arms up behind his head. “When I was younger, people expected me to bottom a lot.”

“You’re not into it?”

“No, I am,” Jonny clarifies, “but, I was young and you know how it is with the hockey ass.” He chuckles. “I had a lot of people try to put me on my stomach.”

Patrick looks at him, at how Jonny’s so confident, how he was one of the youngest captains in the NHL, and he can’t even imagine it.

“Have you…have you ever had a boyfriend?” Patrick asks tentatively.

Jonny makes a considering sound. “I’ve had people I’ve fucked more than once?”

Patrick laughs, incredulous. “Dude, seriously?”

Jonny nods. “Yeah I’m serious. I’m not out to the public. It’s kinda tough to hide a boyfriend. I wouldn’t want to anyway.”

“That’s…sad,” Patrick says. Although the fact that Jonathan Toews is gay seems like the NHL’s best worst kept secret.

“Nah,” Jonny says. “Hockey is life. And banging a whole lot of different people isn’t actually a hardship.”

Patrick understands. It’s only strange because so many of Jonny’s agemates in the NHL are in serious relationships or are already married. Obviously that’s a whole other universe from Jonny’s experience as a gay man, Patrick had always boggled at the guys who married the girls they’d met in juniors. Patrick had fucked around, because he was a teenage boy, and he’d had two priorities, getting his dick wet and scoring goals. But the latter always had primacy over the former.

He clears his throat. “So what’d you do, to get them to stop trying to make you catch?”

"Just learned to be upfront about it. And it’s not like I won’t do it."

"I’ve never…" Patrick trails off.

"Yeah?" Jonny looks curious.

Patrick shifts on the bed, settling himself better on it. He doesn’t know why, but it’s hard to look Jonny in the eye when he’s like “I’ve hooked up a few times with guys, in juniors.”

Jonny gives him a conspiratorial smile. “Buff told me juniors is filled with gay boys.”

"Don’t ask, don’t tell," Patrick replies. "Jesus, you would’ve destroyed in juniors."

Jonny rolls over onto his front, pillowing his chin on his crossed arms. His bare shoulders glow gold in the low light of the hotel room, they look like they’ve been lovingly hewn from rock with velvet skin laid over it that Patrick desperately wants to touch.

"I think you’re giving me too much credit," Jonny says dryly.

Patrick makes a face. “Okay, I think we can both admit out loud that I saw you that one time.”

Jonny doesn’t even look embarrassed, he just tongues at his teeth, a slow flash of pink, expression far away like he’s remembering.

"Is it always like that?" Patrick asks, because he’s a glutton for punishment and he can picture Jonny fucking that guy into a sloppy, moaning mess all too clearly.

"Eh," Jonny says, noncommittally. "You’d be surprised at how easy it is to make em whine for it. But nah, it’s not always like that."

"I wouldn’t know where to start."

"Figure out what you want," Jonny reiterates. “The rest’ll fall into place. You’re an attractive guy, Kaner. Soon I’m sure you’ll be tearing it up out there.” He reassures him, expression fond. After a pause he adds, “Once we resolve the hair situation."

"Oh fuck you." Patrick hits him with his other pillow.

Jonny cracks up and tosses it back. “I’m sorry, I can’t lie.”

Patrick gets out of bed to hit him in the face with the pillow this time, grinding it down with his palms while Jonny vibrates with laughter underneath him. He hits him again. “Take it back,” he says.

Jonny’s smirks, cheeks red from where the pillow ground into his skin. “I’m sorry, little man, I call it like I see it.”

“Shut up!” Patrick cries and punches him in the stomach. Not hard, not enough that Jonny stops laughing. He yanks at Patrick’s wrist, pulling him off balance. The only thing that Patrick knows how to do to fight back is hit him with the pillow again.

“Calm down,” Jonny says, laughter starting to subside, but then starting up again when he catches sight of Patrick’s outraged expression.

Patrick leans down, trying to smother him with the pillow, but Jonny only laughs harder and soon they’re rolling across the bed, as Jonny hooks his legs and rolls them over and then it’s a flurry of limbs rolling together, trying to jab whatever tender bits they can reach. Patrick’s small but he’s scrappy, and like all people with a size disadvantage, he fights dirty. He gets Jonny good in the kidney and then heaves with all his might, finally rolling on top again. He grabs the pillow by the head of the bed and starts batting Jonny with it.

“Yeah? How do you like my hair now?” he says, getting in another good whack.

Jonny laughs so hard tears stream down his cheeks and his face is red. He fights Patrick and his pillow off, grabbing his wrists and tugging so that Patrick collapses flat on top of his chest, immobilized. 

Patrick feels the rise and fall of Jonny’s chest underneath his own, flat on top of him as he is. Jonny’s heart slows down to a resting rate, but Patrick can tell his own pulse is racing just looking at Jonny’s bright eyes and brilliant grin.

He shifts, trying to work himself free, and as he does one horrifying detail crystallizes in his mind. He’s hard, right here, right now, legs tangled together with Jonny’s, dick pressing insistently to his hip. He tugs at his wrists, frantically trying to escape and Jonny lets him go. Patrick practically springs up off the bed.

“I am…I didn’t…you shouldn’t…” he babbles, red-faced and horrified. He retreats to the other side of the room, refusing to meet Jonny’s eyes.

Slowly Jonny sits up, elbows resting on his knees. “Patrick, c’mon, don’t worry about it.”

Patrick buries his face in his hands.

“It’s just friction…” he says. “Happens to all of us. You shouldn’t think anything of it.”

“It’s just—” Patrick shakes his head, mortified.

Jonny’s voice is measured and calm when he says, “Seriously, it’s happened to all of us. When Tuomo and I first started, they had us rooming together. Same thing happened then—more than once okay? You’re only 18, all of us remember what that’s like.”

Patrick sighs gustily and sinks back to the bed. He should just take the out. He gets hard at least ten times a day, and usually from the weirdest shit. But this wasn’t an accidental fucking boner. He should’ve known better. He should’ve done something. Kept his head together a little, not let himself be caught up in the moment.

“Patrick?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s no big deal, I know, I know. That was just…” he stops and shakes his head. At least the embarrassment has killed that one off.

“We cool?” Jonny asks tentatively, like he was the one who did something wrong. When Patrick finally forces himself to meet his eyes, he finds that Jonny looks honestly worried about it.

He clears his throat. “Yeah, we’re cool. It won’t uh—it won’t happen again.”

Jonny makes a dismissive noise. “Patrick, I’m a gay dude. You gotta stop acting like I’m gonna jump you in the locker room for it.”

Patrick laughs weakly. “I know, I know,” he says. “You know how it is,” he finishes lamely.

As if that’s what Patrick was worried about, some kind of fucking retaliation and not the fact that it wasn’t just fucking friction. Yes, rolling around on a mattress trying to smush a pillow into Jonny’s face after he teased him about his hair one too many times was definitely friction. But the thing is, he’s got hard from the way Jonny smells, and how his hips felt between Kaner’s thighs, and the velvety soft skin Patrick could feel everywhere. He got hard, because he was in kissing distance of Jonny.

That definitely wasn’t just friction.

*


	17. Anatomy of the Sword, Part II (April 2015)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I got a request for Anatomy of the Sword when I was doing the timestamp challenge. You can read previous bits [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3491390/chapters/7675097). This is set some time into the future, after they’ve already fomented rebellion.

The news breaks that they’ve taken the capital and have pushed the impostor’s forces back to the Eastern Reaches in the middle of a trade negotiation with Dyfelin’s ambassadress. It was a hard-won alliance to begin with and Patrick had been closeted with them for days on end, receiving field reports and as he opened every missive, trying not to look like he thought the outcome was anything but assured.

When the runner bursts in, interrupting a long-winded speech on taxes and levies from one of Aklia’s ministers, he barely even apologizes before darting over to Patrick’s ear and delivering the news.

“From the front, your majesty,” he says, even though Patrick already knows from the expression on his face what he’s about to say. “Sir Keith sends you the following message, ‘We have taken it back.’”

Relief washes over him. He had fallen in love with Jonathan’s dream of a different Firmament, a different world from the one that made them into the men they are today, and he had allowed himself to believe in it from the very moment that Jonathan knelt before him and told him in his strong sure voice, “I will win you this war, if you will lead.” But it is one thing to believe and another to see those beliefs made reality.

There is feasting that night and fireworks set off over the castle. Patrick sits, a little drunk on celebratory wine, his eye trained on the eastern horizon as he waits for Jonathan to return with an army at his back, and thinks, it is an amazing time to be alive.

Two weeks later when Sir Brandon and Sir Duncan return to Cathán, that self-same army behind them, there is no Jonathan with them.

He receives the news in his library, doing his best to fumble his way through statecraft he never learned.

“It was during the last press. We had just gained entry to the August Palace’s inner fortifications. They started using their siege machines against their own defenses in an effort to destroy us all. The section he was on was hit hard,” Brandon tells him. At first Patrick doesn’t understand quite what he’s trying to say and he stares at him in shock, until Brandon clarifies, “He went over the wall. We searched for three days, but could not find his body anywhere.”

“If you found no body, he may yet be alive,” Patrick replies sharply. “If the impostor had him, they would have publicly executed him to send us a message. He could still live.”

“What you say is true, your majesty,” Duncan says carefully. “But that section of wall is on the water. We have found other bodies washed up on the shores. I don’t see how he could’ve survived.”

Patrick feels a piece of his dream break off and fall into the Ocean Black. A part of his heart goes with it.

The months pass until they’re hard upon winter and no further fighting can take place, but with the spring thaws, Patrick will have to name Jonathan's successor. There are many people who could handle the job, capable men, but all alike in that none of them had half of the brilliance Jonathan possessed in his little finger. But life must continue. If wishing only made it so, the world would look so very different for him. Eventually he will have to make a choice.

He buries himself in work. The King of Firmament has much to do, much more than he ever could’ve anticipated. The August Palace was destroyed in the assault, but some day Patrick will have to move and establish his court in the Capital, and so they must turn to rebuilding. Other actors need to be rewarded or bribed for their service. And it seems there is ever somebody who wants something from him. But life must continue. He spends a lot of time reminding himself of that now. 

He's in the middle of trying to solve a land dispute between two lords younger even than Patrick when a servant interrupts the proceedings. “I beg your forgiveness, majesty. But milord Sharp said you would wish to know—Sir Jonathan is returned.”

Patrick’s up and out of his chair before it even occurs to him what sort of message he might send his populace by running out of the room in the middle of hearing his citizen’s petitions, and by the time he does realize he’s too far away to care. He nearly sprints the entire way to the apartments he granted Jonathan in the North Wing.

Patrick sees him as soon as he gains entrance to the chamber. There he is, tall and proud, standing in front of a table strewn with maps, arm done up in a sling, lip split. He’s pale and underfed, and from the sound of it, already planning more battles with his men. And Patrick has to pause to stare at him. Jonathan must feel his eyes on him, because he stops in the middle of talking quietly and looks up. He sees Patrick at his door and slowly, his battered and beloved face resolves into a smile. That’s really it. Patrick doesn’t care about the impropriety anymore. He crosses the room, ignoring all else, and hugs Jonathan, turning his face into his throat. He must’ve recently bathed, because he smells of vetiver and sage. Slowly, Jonathan reaches up with his uninjured arm to embrace him back.

After a moment, Patrick steps back and away. He casts his eyes over the room. The assembled soldiers and knights. “Leave us,” he announces. They jump to do his bidding, flooding out of the room until it’s just Patrick and Jonathan.

Jonathan looks at him, a small smile about his mouth. “It is good to see you well, your majesty,” he says.

“Where have you been?” Patrick asks.

Jonathan winces. “I was washed out to sea. A merchant vessel off of the coast of Polemis picked me up and brought me to land. It’s taken me this long to return. I apologize.”

“I…” Patrick stares at Jonathan’s face—his kind dark eyes and serious brow, the gentle curve of his lips and the dramatic sweep of his eyelashes—and suddenly he can longer stand not to be kissing him. He goes up on his toes and brushes his lips across Jonathan’s mouth. Jonathan stiffens against him and Patrick backs up hurriedly, stomach plummeting. “Sorry, sorry, I thought…”

Jonathan blushes and won’t meet Patrick’s eyes. “No,” Jonathan says. “I just—I’ve never—not with anybody.”

“Never?” Patrick whispers, disbelieving. Jonathan is a handsome man. 

“I couldn’t risk any children born on the wrong side of the bed,” he replies carefully, face looking tense.

“Oh,” Patrick replies. He understands—what Jonathan went through, it was more than any child should have to endure.

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” Jonathan says softly, looking up and meeting Patrick’s gaze head on. “Thought about…you.”

Patrick tugs him back in for another kiss and this time Jonathan doesn’t resist. Patrick swipes wickedly at the seam of his lips with his tongue until Jonathan parts them, letting in. Jonathan makes a soft, startled noise when he brushes their tongues together and tightens his hand in the front of Patrick’s doublet like he wants to pull him closer, and sweet lord, Patrick could despoil him right here across this very table Jonathan is looking at reports on.

He must push too hard though, because Jonathan’s lip splits open against his mouth, the salty metallic tang of his blood bursting on Patrick’s tongue.

“Ah, I’m so—” Patrick starts, pulling back.

“Worry not,” Jonathan interrupts, reaching up and brushing at his mouth. He sucks blood-bright tips of his fingers into his mouth, licking them clean. “There is time to do it again.”

“I thought you were lost to me,” Patrick tells him, voice cracking. He’s unable to stop staring at him. He wants to touch him all over, explore under Jonathan’s clothes to see if there are more injuries he’s hiding underneath the fabric.

“Not lost,” Jonathan replies, bending down to bring their foreheads together. “Just delayed.”


	18. Professional Soccer Playing Jonny (June 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based off of citybrights' prompt during the world cup last year: "HEY SO THIS WORLD CUP BUSINESS REMINDS ME OF A LITTLE AU WHERE JONNY IS A SOCCER PLAYER. now is the perfect time for a snippet of that!! <333 ps I hope you're thoroughly enjoying the game right now." There's also artwork [here](http://the4freedoms.tumblr.com/post/106918917065/during-the-world-cup-i-started-a-snippet-where)

It’s fair to say that Patrick’s interest in soccer is not great. His kid sisters played when they were in elementary school, but Patrick never made it to their games, too busy with his own. He’s been to a few Chicago Fire games—the tickets were easy to get and his first year in Chicago, not even legal to drink, most of the guys leaps and bounds older than him, there wasn’t a lot to do, so he made it to a couple of games. When the World Cup kicked off in 2010, he didn’t know a single player on the US team aside from Landon Donovan and he was in a drunken depressed haze for about three weeks straight, so he wasn’t exactly paying attention to ESPN 2.

After he gets his ass dumped in Switzerland to ‘rehab’ his image, Patrick doesn’t want to do much of anything besides eat, sleep, and play hockey. If he keeps his head down maybe they can forget all the bullshit about trading him. It’s just something to pass the time until the lockout ends and he can get back to his real life. Segs is tearing it up, trying to get him to go clubbing—Patrick goes once, but his heart isn’t in it. He ends up talking with these Australian tourists for a couple of hours and then walking back to his apartment. His mom is still awake when he gets home, and when she sees him, her face hardens. Patrick’s always been a mama’s boy. He’s not ashamed to say it. The way she looks at him—he doesn’t attempt to go clubbing again.

One day, on a whim, or because he’s got nobody else to go with, Berra invites him to an FC Biel-Bienne game.

“It’s not Super League, but it’s still good fun,” he says, holding up the tickets. Patrick was aware that Biel had a soccer team, but he’s never even heard of Arau, the other team on the ticket.

Patrick thinks of his mother’s face. He shrugs. “Alright.”

He wonders what he’s got himself into when Berra explains that they have to drive to Neuchâtel because Gurzelon no longer meets safety standards. But La Maladiere is beautiful, and the diehard fans (all 300 of them) who made the 30 minute drive just to watch their team play are intense and amazing.

“The team’s horrible, really horrible,” Berra says with a laugh, saluting him with his beer. “I should’ve given you a warning.”

There’s a guy sitting next to Patrick thoroughly wrapped up in a scarf and coat who leans forward and says, “We’re going to get the drubbing of our life.”

But then Biel turns it out. Morello gets a hat trick, and Arau’s only point comes when Challandes accidentally knocks it into Biel’s own goal. Patrick finds himself jumping up and down with Berra and scarf guy, cheering at the top of his lungs when Morello nets his third of the night.

“That was something else,” he says as they’re heading home. “I can’t believe most of those guys play a full 90 minutes!”

Berra laughs at him. “You should come to a real game, sometime.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says with a smile.

A few weeks later, Berra comes up to him in the locker room after practice and says, “Hey, a couple of us are going to see Basel play Ajax next week, if you want to join?”

“Ajax?”

“Amsterdam,” Berra says with a smile. “Tier 1.”

Patrick chews at his lower lip. It was fun last time. He’s not doing anything else. “Yeah, why not?”

This game is an entirely different beast. It’s fast paced. The crowd at St. Jakob-Park is larger than what the UC can hold and there’s a light show at the beginning. They’ve got good seats, even though he fans are probably going to kill Segs because he keeps getting up to buy more beer. Haas actually has a Basel jersey that Huguenin is mocking mercilessly in French that Patrick can’t understand. Haas flips him off with a laugh.

“They’re gonna get murdered,” Gossweiler tells Patrick at kickoff.

Patrick looks at him. “Oh yeah?”

“Almost all the best Swiss players end up in Germany or Italy,” he explains. “Ajax is a young team, but they manage to hang on to their talent a little bit better.”

“Let them!” Berra says on Gossweiler’s other side. “I’m rooting for Amsterdam.”

Gossweiler rolls his eyes. “He’s from Bülach, his team is rivals with Basel.”

“Grasshoppers!” Berra says. “Ugh, Manuel, do you root for Zurich?”

“Yes, I root for Zurich!”

Patrick looks back at the game when they descend into bickering in German.

Ajax has maintained possession of the ball pretty steadily, but Basel’s been clearing it out of their own half, keeping Ajax at the line. But then a player in red and white steals the ball from one of Basel’s forwards and darts straight up the center towards the goal, blowing right by a forward on his quest to the goal.

There’s no way he’s going to make it, Patrick thinks, watching Basel’s defense converge on him. And then somehow, he’s through them and taking the shot off his left foot right before Schär slides into him. The ball sails right past the keeper’s fingers. The Ajax player, number 19, ends up dumped flat on his ass, but the goal is good and he pops up again in nearly the same motion, already racing back down the field with arms spread to meet his teammates.

There are more Amsterdam fans here than Patrick would’ve expected, because the crowd erupts in cheers.

“What happened?” Berra asks, looking around at the crowd.

“You missed it! Number 19 scored,” Patrick tells him.

“Oh, that guy! Toews.” Berra says, “he’s American I think.”

He says the player’s name Tay-vis.

“Toews is not American! What?” Gossweiler replies. “An American playing for Ajax? No way. Look at his last name! That’s some Frisian junk.”

“He’s American, I’m telling you.” Berra replies.

Gossweiler rolled his eyes.

American or not, Patrick can’t take his eyes off of him. He’s tireless, up and down the field, sending off these crisp passes that slice over the grass and always meet their mark. On Streller’s breakaway, Toews catches up and slide tackles the ball just as Streller reaches his own goal box. Streller has to dive over him to avoid being taken out. Before Streller can even stand up, Toews is on his feet and connecting the ball to Babel.

He scores again after a long-range pace from his freakin’ goalkeeper. Patrick doesn’t even know how that’s possible.

Two goals later Ajax wins the game. Nobody is surprised.

*

They go for a drink afterwards, to a bar that Gossweiler promises won’t be full of football fans. Which of course means it’s the exact bar that the team goes out in afterwards. Patrick doesn’t even know why he feels starstruck when he sees number 19 standing at the bar, dressed casually in slacks and a black sweater.

“Hah, have we created a football fan out of you?” Berra asks, following the line of his sight.

“Oh, fuck off,” Patrick says, but he smiles to take the sting out of it. “I’m gonna get a beer.”

Getting the beer is a failed endeavor. He waits forever, trying to get the bartender’s attention. He learned the word ‘verzeihung’ a few weeks back, but all of his attempts to use it had resulted in laughter, and he’s not sure how loud he’d have to shout it to get the guy to listen.

He sighs after the bartender once again serves somebody else.

“Can I buy Patrick Kane a beer?” a voice says off to his left in flawless English.

He turns to look and finds Toews standing at his shoulder, smiling. He’s tall, Patrick has to look up to meet his eyes.

“Uh…yeah?” Patrick replies, startled. Jonny holds up two fingers and a bartender immediately comes over with two pints. Patrick resists the urge to make a face at him as he disappears to help another customer. Patrick shakes his head and accepts his pint with a grateful nod. “You know who I am?”

“I’m Canadian,” Toews replies. “Yeah, I know who you are.”

Patrick laughs. “Man, my teammates were fighting over whether or not you were American.”

“Absolutely not,” Toews makes a face, but then grins to show he’s teasing. “Were you at the match?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “It was a good game. It’s not that different than hockey. I mean.” He feels himself coloring up a little. “Beyond the obvious.”

Toews looks thoughtful. He pushes his sleeves up his forearms, fabric bunching at the elbows and then crosses his arms on the bar top like he’s settling in for a long talk. “You know, that’s probably true. I can’t think of any other sport that would be as close. Certainly not American football.”

Patrick winds up talking hockey and bitching about the lockout with Toews for an hour. He finally manages to get the bartender to pay attention and orders the next round even though Toews tries to wave him off.

“Call me Jonathan,” he says, finally accepting the beer.

“Cool, nice to meet you, Jonathan,” Patrick replies with a laugh. “Man, you’re from Canada, you didn’t play hockey?”

“No, I did, just one day it came time to choose,” he says with a shrug. “If the scout from De Toekompst hadn’t offered me a place, I might’ve stuck with it, maybe gone somewhere.”

“You’re a professional athlete, I think you probably could’ve made it,” Patrick says with a laugh. “But then you’d be making less money.”

“Oh yes, the penury of hockey players, that’s what kept me away from the NHL,” Jonathan replies dryly.

Patrick blinks at him. “Penury?”

“Poverty,” Jonathan says.

“No, I know what it means,” Patrick says with a laugh, “I just can’t believe you used it.”

Jonathan rolls his eyes and changes the subject. “I do get the month of December off, that is a plus.”

“Whaaaat?” Patrick asks. “What do you do?”

Jonathan says, “This was actually my last game of 2012, so my family is flying in to Bern in a few days and we’re going to go skiing in Gstaad and then back to Amsterdam.”

“But like, to keep your conditioning up?”

“I work out.” Jonathan laughs and rolls his shoulders, the sweater tightens across his chest. Yeah, Patrick can see that.

“I’d be really bad, junk food all the time, laying around watching Arrested Development all day long,” Patrick replies, clearing his throat and looking away from Jonathan’s chest. He’d gotten the unavoidable urge to just lean in and kiss him, right there at the bar in front of everybody.“I was in such terrible shape by the time I signed the contract to come out here.”

“I’ve been playing for Ajax since I was 12, I guess I’m just used to the break by now.”

“Jesus, that long?” Patrick goggles at him. “That’s intense. I don’t want to leave the Hawks, but, playing for them for that long, I dunno. If we don’t win a cup soon, I might need to reevaluate.” He laughs, but a part of him is serious. It’s not that he doesn’t love Chicago, it’s just that, it’s fucking hard to keep coming so close and falling short every single time. Ajax has actually won things according to Berra, so that would make it a lot easier.

He gives Jonathan a measuring look. “How old are you?”

“24,” Jonathan says.

“Oh, cool, me too,” Patrick smiles, “As of four days ago.”

“Happy birthday, man,” Jonathan says. “Did you do anything special?”

“Worked out, had practice, went to dinner with my mom.” Patrick shakes his head. “It’s an exciting life I lead.”

Jonathan eyes him for a long moment, expression thoughtful. He tilts his head. “We should do something.”

Patrick stares at him. “What?”

“You’re in Biel, Biel’s like thirty minutes from Bern, I’m leaving for Bern in the morning.” He shrugs. “We should do something.” 

Patrick laughs. “Like what?”

“I don’t know yet.” Jonathan gives him a half-smile, eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’ll figure something out.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes in the original tumblr post:
> 
> Because Ajax is my team, I put Jonny on it, even though it took some truly reality changing things to get that to work. For one, only a single swiss team had a Club Coefficient high enough to play in the Champions league in the 2012/2013 season, and that was Basel, and they never made it out of the qualifying rounds. Ajax meanwhile had a not so great year and never got past the group stage. BUT, for the purposes of this fic, Basel did actually get out of the qualifying rounds, and managed to draw Ajax in the group stage. Putting Jonny on Ajax is actually not totally insane from a soccer player from Canada perspective. Ajax has an elite youth academy, you can read about it [in this NY Times article](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06Soccer-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) and they recruit international talent.
> 
> Re: Berra’s pronunciation of his last name. I’ve seen a lot of info that says he’s Dutch Mennonite with the original surname being van Toovs. Toovs is not a letter combination that appears in Dutch. The “oe” is an anglicization of spelling an O with an umlaut. I’m not a linguist, but if his ancestors were in fact Dutch, and came through Germany, my guess is that the “oe” or “ö” to Germanize the adjacent sound in Dutch “eeu” which would probably make the original name the Frisian “Teeuwis” which to an English speaker’s ear would sound like “Tay-vis” (although there is a difference between a “w” and a “v” in Dutch, they’re much closer than they are in English), and by that phonological process, “Tayves” is not an actually insane pronunciation of Toews. Playing in the Netherlands, my guess is most Dutch people would say “Tay-vis” or “Tay-wis.”


	19. Don't Trust The Manslut in 6A (August 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A "What's Your Number" AU based off of this [tumblr](http://the4freedoms.tumblr.com/post/93606412811) post.

Patrick can appreciate a nice set of abs as much as anybody, and a good butt, and strong thighs, and these amazing back muscles—okay, yes, the guy in apartment 6A is the whole package—but he doesn’t need to see it waltzing up and down the hall outside his apartment five times a day.

6A is a revolving door of women, one goes in the morning, a different one comes out at night. It’s impressive, and horrible, and probably unsanitary. The apartment must be a jizz-stained wreck. Patrick doesn’t know how these women haven’t figured it out yet. One morning, as Patrick’s leaving for work, he sees a beautiful, tall, model-like like blonde coming out of 6A’s apartment. When he realizes he’s forgot his phone and goes back not two minutes later, 6A’s out in the hall, dressed only in the tiniest tightest pair of boxer briefs, kissing a petite asian chick full on the mouth and then sending her off with a pat on the ass.

"Hey, 6C," he says with a lazy smile, clutching a pile of mail in his hand (still mostly naked), when Patrick comes back out again, iPhone in hand.

Patrick raises a brow, somehow managing to keep his eyes off of the completely unsubtle bulge of his package. “Off to a good start?”

6A laughs, raising his arms above his head to crack his shoulders, perfectly formed muscles rippling as he does. “I hope so.” He winks and then ducks back inside his place.

Patrick shakes his head. He’s gonna be late for work.

*

The headache Patrick wakes up to already tells him he made some very poor decisions. However, the arm, with the heavy Uniform Wares watch laying across his middle, tells him just how bad. Patrick can’t believe he hooked up with his ex last night. He promised himself he was done with that, because knowingly making bad decisions is well, bad. It's probably also a bad idea to literally flee his apartment because of said bad decision. Because now he's standing in only t-shirt and boxers, back against the door, eyes squeezed shut tight, trying to make himself go back in there.

“You okay?”

Patrick opens his eyes and finds 6A standing in his open doorway, in just a pair of low slung sweatpants that highlight his perfect sex lines.

“Do you own actual clothes?” Patrick asks.

6A chuckles. “A nylon singlet somewhere? Maybe?”

Patrick rolls his eyes.

“But seriously,” 6A says. “What’s up?”

Patrick doesn’t know this guy from Adam, so he’s got no clue why he's interested in Patrick's problems. He still finds himself spouting out the whole story. “I uh…just got drunk at the bar I always used to go to with my ex-boyfriend, because I’m a moron. Of course he was there.” He shakes his head. “And now, he’s here.”

6A whistles. “Yikes. One of those, eh?”

Patrick sighs. “Yeah, I should…get back.”

“Good luck,” 6A says as Patrick’s letting himself back inside. Patrick looks back over his shoulder and 6A cocks his head and smiles. When he let’s himself back into the apartment, he finds Sam, shirtless, boxers crumpled in one hand as he belts up his jeans in the living room.

“Hey, babe,” Sam says, eyes crinkling in a warm smile.

Patrick hates himself a little. He just wants to go over there and fuck that stupid look off Sam’s face. But he’s been down that road before, twice last night if memory serves him right. This never ends well. This ends with Sam disappearing on him emotionally for weeks on end, with canceled plans, and missed phone calls and unanswered texts. It ends with Patrick forgiving him over and over, because Sam is just fucked up. And Patrick pretending what’s right in front of his face isn’t real, because if he can just love Sam enough, if he can just be the steady shoulder Sam needs, eventually he’ll stop all that bullshit. Only it isn’t true. Sam will never change.

At least not for Patrick.

He doesn’t even want to let him go out the door right now, even with his gut churning with nausea, and the welling sadness rising up in him. There’s a small, desperate part of him that worries that the greatest thing he’ll ever feel for another human is wrapped up in Sam’s person, and the whole thing is a waste, because Sam will never stop being selfish.

“You okay?” Sam asks, walking to Patrick’s kitchen and rummaging around in his fridge, because that’s what Sam does. He takes up space.

There’s a knock on the door then, a solid pounding that startles Patrick. 

"Uh, one sec," he tells Sam and goes to open the door, only to find 6A, mercifully covered for once. Although the workout clothes, backwards baseball cap, and the sheepish grin on his face don't make him any less sexy.

“Oh, hey,” Patrick says, blinking at him.

“Hi,” he says brightly and then nods when he sees Sam. “Hey, man.”

“Hey,” Sam says, helping himself to one of Patrick’s Fage yogurts. Like they’re still together. Like what Patrick has is his. But that’s how it was, wasn’t it? Everything that Patrick had he gladly would’ve given him.

Patrick finds 6A staring at him a little uncertainly and clears his throat. “Uh, is something wrong?”

“Yeah, actually,” 6A replies, “I think I just busted a pipe. I’m drowning over there, you wouldn’t happen to have a pipe wrench?”

Patrick opens his mouth, but Sam beats him to it. “Pat doesn’t know shit about plumbing.” he says with a laugh. It’s fond, but something about it still sours Patrick’s gut even further.

“You uh…want me to take a look?” Patrick says, because at this point, any excuse to get out of this apartment while Sam is in it is a good one.

6A scratches at the back of his neck. “Yeah, I got nothing, man.”

They all troop across the hall to 6A’s place, which is sort of the reverse of Patrick’s, what with the framed cult film posters and the clutter. There are books everywhere and Patrick spots a fancy Systemdek turntable sitting on a shelf beneath the window. Currently the kitchen sink is geysering straight upwards, water all over the counters, the cupboard under the sink lies open, cleaning products hastily shoved around like 6A tried to get a look before giving up and asking Patrick.

“Christ! Your floors,” Patrick says, looking at the river of water running over the hardwood.

6A bends to look under the sink again and he’s soaked in seconds.

Sam sucks in a breath as the water pressure increases, spraying them all down with a fine mist. “Pat, I’m gonna head out,” he says, retreating back towards the door.

“Yeah, yeah, okay!” Patrick says, hoping he doesn’t sound as enthusiastic about it as he feels.

Sam waves. “Call me, okay?” he says, looking sincere. Patrick drops his eyes.

“I will. See you around, Sam,” he says.

“Bye, Sam!” 6A says from under the sink, where he’s clanking around with the pipes.

“Yeah, uh, bye,” Sam says, already at the door. “Good luck with your uh…situation.”

The door slams shut after him.

6A sits up from under the sink. “He’s gone?”

“Yeah, he kinda hightailed it out of here,” Patrick says, shrugging. “Should we call you a plumber or something?”

“Nah,” 6A grins and reaches back under the sink, he twists something, bicep cording tight, and the fall of water abruptly stops.

Patrick stares at him as he gets to his feet, brushing water out of his eyes. “Did you just…bust your own pipe to give me an out?”

6A smiles. “It broke. I coulda fixed it pretty quick, but then I thought hey whatever, you needed rescuing.”

“That’s uh…really good of you, dude,” Patrick says, looking around at the kitchen. “Do you need help cleaning up?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, tugging the hem of his shirt up to wipe the water off his face, exposing the sharp cut of his abs. His black t-shirt and nylon shorts are clinging to his thighs, Patrick can clearly see the outline of his dick. He isn’t sure how or why this is even possible, but it’s somehow more pornographic than his running around in his itty bitty boxer briefs.

“The landlord’ll do it, or I’ll raise hell,” 6A says as he drops the hem of his wet shirt, breaking Patrick out of his reverie. Patrick coughs, looking somewhere else.

He can’t believe 6A did that for him. It’s probably the nicest thing that anybody has ever done in the history of his life.

“Thank you,” he says softly, looking down at the ground.

“Hey,” 6A says with a shrug. “Been there, remember?”

Patrick shakes his head. It’s a little hard to imagine 6A in a relationship with the constant stream of women in and out of his apartment. “Yeah, well, still, thank you.”

6A shrugs again. “You’re welcome.” He bends down to pick up his discarded cleaning supplies, water-logged nylon going tight over his buttocks, and Patrick’s throat goes dry.

“Okay, well, if you don’t need any help, I’m gonna head back to my place,” he says, inching back towards the door.

“Yeah, see you around, 6C,” 6A calls back, already moving around his kitchen trying to mop up the water.


	20. The Fratboy and the Bartender (March 2015)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not-quite-not!fic inspired by this gifset: http://the4freedoms.tumblr.com/post/109158051261/twoearsandaheart-the4freedoms-college-au

**This started with my tags: #Patrick’s in a frat #Jonny’s bartending #in the place they hit up #all the time #to pay the bills #he and Patrick have a good rapport #Jonny will do shots with him #at the end of the night #and sit and debate hockey with him #and sometimes Patrick’s bros #are like yo #why are you hanging out so much with the bartender #and on those times where Patrick is actually civil to his friends #Jonny sort of can’t look away #in a moment #Patrick will feel his eyes on him #and give him the sweetest goddamn smile #and that’s finally it #because he’s known this kid for years now #if you can’t take a chance #what’s the point of living #so he writes his address on a bar napkin and says I’m off at 2 #and if Patrick shows up #he shows up**

**[poeelektra](http://archiveofourown.org/users/poeelektra/pseuds/poeelektra) added: i def read this the first and second times as: HE SHOWS UP but does he show up? i mean…obvs he shows up or he doesn’t but there’s a really good reason but jonny doesn’t know that for the approx 34 hrs he spends brutally disappointed OR he shows up and then… it’s always the prelude i want more of does he show up all wicked grin and cocky lean but then inform jonny he’s not getting laid? OR does everybody get their cookie and if so who goes first?**

When Patrick lifts his drink up and finds that scrawled out underneath it, the ink starting to bleed just a little at the edges, he nearly spits out his beer.

“What?” his buddy, Drew, asks.

“Nothing, man, sorry,” Patrick says, sliding the napkin off the table. He looks at his watch. 12:59 AM. Just a little over an hour. God. He looks over at the bar where Jonny isn’t even paying attention to him, he’s flirting and laughing with two ladies as he’s making their drinks. He’s in a button-down in the sleeves rolled up his forearms and he looks so good, eyes bright, face lit up with a smile.

The thing is, Patrick’s never really hooked up with a guy. Fumbling makeouts with his roommate on his high school DC trip six years ago don’t count. Jonny’s been a safe crush. Patrick didn’t have to worry about what it meant that he liked him, because he’s always seemed so, well, unattainable. But now he’s got a napkin with Jonny’s address and a time on it, and the question is, is he going to go?

Jonny seems to sense his gaze on him, because he starts to turn his head, but Patrick drops his eyes before they can make eye contact. Drew is saying some shit about how the Seahawks only ever win off their defense, and Steve’s loudly extolling the virtues of Marshawn Lynch in reply.

Patrick thinks about Jonny’s smile and he thinks about the way he’s been coming here for years, talking and laughing with him. Patrick's thought about him more times than is comfortable, jerking off in the shower. It's time to nut up. Of course he’s going to go.

“Fuck, I’m starving, I’m getting wings,” his friend Tommy says, breaking up Steve and Drew’s heated argument. “You coming, Patrick?”

“I uh–” Patrick hesitates for a moment. What’s he going to do, just hang around until Jonny gets off work? The thought of it is suddenly nerve-wracking. Better to just show up when Jonny told him to. He clears his throat. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”

He slides out of the booth and pulls his jacket on, carefully not looking in Jonny’s direction. When he’s outside he can't stop himself from pulling out his phone to bring up the time a second time. 1:07. Shit. The minutes are gonna go by like molasses.

*

Jonny’s place is in one of the older parts of town–a kind of shabby old red brick building made fashionable by gentrification. Patrick checks to make sure he’s got the right number, because there’s no name on the buzzer. The door buzzes open obligingly only moments after he presses the button. No 'hello' or 'who is it?', just the electronic whirr letting him no he can go inside. Patrick swallows. Fuck, what is he getting into?

Jonny’s on the fourth floor of the walk up. By the time Patrick gets to the top, Jonny’s there, leaning against his doorframe, barefoot and a little rumpled. His eyes crinkle up in a smile when he sees Patrick. “Wasn’t sure you’d show,” he says simply.

“I uh–don’t do this…” Patrick says.

“Hookup?” Jonny asks.

He shakes his head, tugging nervously on the brim of his baseball cap. “Not with–um. Not with guys.”

Jonny’s smile turns wicked at the corners of his mouth. “That’s okay. I do.”

**#and then he probably #defiles Patrick #all night long #like Patrick thought he was coming there #for making out #maybe uh--some jerking off #or like heavy petting #whatever bullshit they call that #but oh fuck #jonny's on his knees #sucking his dick #and now Patrick's lying flat on his belly #as Jonny eats out his ass #and then Jonny's slowly sliding a thumb across his hole #and asking 'can i?' #and Patrick's jerking and sobbing against him 'yes #yes fuck #do it' #and god #the way Patrick just so beautifully pinks up #and is so responsive? #well #he might've just made an honest man out of Jonny #it's okay though #Jonny can wait a while #he'll let Patrick figure that out in his own time**

Patrick always kinda wondered why people did this—like he could go for some butt stuff occasionally. He’d let girlfriends mess around a little, back there. But, in so far as putting his dick in someone’s ass? Why go in through the window when there’s a perfectly good door available, right there. Assplay is just not his thing. And so after Jonny leaves him weak-kneed from a fucking epic blowjob, only the lack of braincells leftover can explain why he says yes when Jonny asks to eat out his ass.

He’s sensitive as fuck right now so soon after coming, and the first touch of Jonny’s tongue, holy jesus god. Patrick did not know it could feel like that. He must say something, because he hears Jonny chuckling behind him, breath blowing hot over his skin. It’s intimate, each kittenish lick around his rim, but also somehow remote. And fuck, now his thoughts are leading to other places—going down a road where Jonny puts his fingers inside, and maybe, hell, maybe his dick. Get more of him that way, feel him closer. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, letting Jonny do this, letting him put that wicked mouth on him like this. The stroke of his tongue, his strong hands holding Patrick open for his mouthis too much. He’s falling apart like an untried virgin and it’s embarrassing.

“You alright?” Jonny asks.

Patrick realizes he’s twisted himself around Jonny’s pillow, hugging it close, hips hitching against the soft flannel sheets as he starts to fatten up to hardness again.

“Don’t stop,” Patrick breathes, wet hole clenching on emptiness.

“You just said no,” Jonny says, rubbing a hand down Patrick’s side. “And it’s cool, we don’t have to do this.”

Patrick hadn’t even realized.

“I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean stop,” Patrick replies, hiding his burning face in his shoulder. He hadn’t. He’d liked it, but—but on the first time?

“What did you mean?” Jonny asks, voice gentle.

Patrick hunches in a little around the pillow. “It’s really intense.”

Jonny’s eyes soften and before Patrick knows what he’s doing, Jonny’s rolling out of the bed, still fully dressed, and heading for the en suite without an explanation. He watches mystified, pushed up on his elbows, as Jonny turns on the taps and starts brushing his teeth. Is that just it then? Are they just not doing this anymore? Fuck, this is so stupid. Why did he have to open his mouth?

Jonny rinses and spits and then comes back out and Patrick wonders, cheeks hot, if he should be getting his clothes together, but Jonny knee-walks back up the bed next to Patrick. 

“Common courtesy,” he says, grinning, and then reaches down, cupping Patrick’s jaw with both hands and catching him up in a filthy wet kiss. Jonny puts his whole body into it. He runs his hands down Patrick’s throat and over his shoulders, before urging Patrick over onto his back and slowly lowering himself down on top of him. His jeans and button-down brush tantalizingly against Patrick’s bare vulnerable skin.

He kisses Patrick until every inch of him tingles and he’s gasping for air. Slowly, Jonny peels off his clothing, between nipping at Patrick’s lips and trailing kisses down over his neck. 

Patrick can feel Jonny's dick pressing against his belly, hot behind the stretched cotton of his boxer-briefs. He tentatively reaches down between them, palming the length of him.

Jonny breaks the kiss on an exhale, eyes shut. When he opens them, hazy and heavy-lidded, the corner of his mouth is kicking up into another smile. 

“Sorry for uh…making you wait,” Patrick says, even as his brain is screaming at him that this is the first time he’s ever touched somebody else’s dick with intent. 

“I don’t have anywhere to be,” Jonny says, voice going rumbly as Patrick experimentally rubs the heel of his palm in a loose circle. “And like I said, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”

Patrick flushes. Just the mere fact that Jonny doesn’t push makes him want to roll back over all the same.


	21. Never Have I Ever (April 2015)

"Never have I ever smoked up in class and tried to give my term paper to the wrong TA,” Jonny addresses the ceiling, a half full bottle of Jack propped next to his hip on the bed. He looks good in the low light, clothes still damp from the rain they sprinted through on the way back from SigEp party, eyelashes dark, skin glowing a little. Patrick’s doing his best not to focus on it or the strange pit in his stomach.

That comment Jonny just made was really specific, so that’s aimed at someone in particular. Patrick waits for it.

Crow, propped up against the closet door, makes a disgusted noise. Ah there it is. “Fuck you, Toews,” he says and takes a swig from his solo cup.

Jonny grins. “Love you, man.” 

When the party at SigEp got busted up by the cops early and then the rain started coming down in sheets, they’d given up trying to find another party, and just gone back to The Row. Somehow downing shots and playing drinking games in Patrick and Jonny’s room with a couple of girls they’d invited inside to dry off had seemed like a good idea.

“Never have I ever jerked it in someone else’s bed,” Sharpy says with Abby tucked into his side. She rolls her eyes like there's a story there.

A bunch of the guys groan and drink. Patrick smiles and says, “Bottoms up,” at the same moment Jonny salutes with his bottle of cheap whiskey and hauls back on a long draught, throat moving as he swallows. Patrick’s jerked it in Jonny’s bed. Not like in some weird fetishistic way or anything, but in a ‘fuck you for sexiling me, I rubbed one out all over your sheets, hope we’re cool,’ kind of a way.

“Never have I ever tried to date two people at once,” Abby says halfheartedly, playing games on her phone at the same time.

Bur, across the room, makes an outraged noise. “I couldn’t make up my mind!” 

“Yeah, how’d that work out for you?” Abby asks. She doesn’t even look up from the screen.

“It was three wonderful days of heaven,” Bur replies. Abby makes a rude noise.

“Never have I ever hooked up with a guy,” Kelly, one of her friends, says triumphantly. She’s a lesbian, so it’s perfectly phrased to take out every other girl in the room. Only incidentally also Patrick. Nobody knows that though. He could leave his cup at his side, not drink up. 

Abby’s lifting her cup and yelling, “Cheap shot! Cheap shot!” while Kelly cackles madly. Abby tackles her and every guy in the room watches interestedly as the two girls wrestle on the floor.

They're not even paying attention. He finds the cup at his lips anyway, and then he’s sucking down on cheap vodka mixed with off-brand cola.

“Whoa, hey there, Peeks,” Sharpy says. “Don’t think I didn’t see that.”

Everybody looks over at him. Patrick sets his cup down on his nightstand with a purposeful thunk. It’s plastic so it doesn’t have quite the same effect. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

“You’ve hooked up with a guy?” Shawsy asks, full of wonder. “Wait, for real?”

Patrick avoids looking in Jonny’s direction. He doesn’t want to know what’s on his face right now. “Just once.” The room is quiet.

“It’s a bit late for the sophomore surprise,” Kelly says, staring at him, speculative.

“I’m not gay,” Patrick shoots back, voice going a little heated. “I’m just…”

“Flexible,” Jonny finishes for him. Patrick doesn’t look over at him, but he feels the way his face is frozen into a bizarre parody of nonchalance. The thing that trips him up, startles him so completely is that Jonny knew! How the fuck could Jonny know?

“Wait, what?” Sharpy asks. “You told Captain Seriously Boring your secrets? Don’t you have any love for your hardworking president?” 

Jonny makes a scoffing noise. “Hardworking,” Jonny replies. “I don’t even think you know what our budget is for the year.”

“That’s why I have you, eh?” Sharpy replies.

Jonny clears his throat. “This game is stupid. Never have I ever had a threesome, sad though I am about it. Fucking put your cup down Shawsy, nobody believes you. Never have I had my face sharted on. You, Sharpy, drink! Never have I ever blown a load in a girl’s eye. Or jacked off in class. Or had sex with my girlfriend with my roommate asleep in the other bed,” he lists off. He’s rolled to his feet and is swinging his bottle up off the bed. “Fuck, I’ve never done anything fun. Who’s on for beer pong?” 

Patrick lets out a breath at the way Jonny took the pressure off of him.

“Yeah, I’m down,” Crow says. “I feel like a fifteen-year-old at a slumber party doing this shit.”

“You had very different slumber parties at fifteen than I did,” Kelly says, bumping him as they all file out of Jonny and Patrick’s room, leaving Patrick behind on his bed, a little mortified, a lot unsure why he opened his big fat mouth. Down the hall he can hear Sharpy ordering the other brothers around to set up the table. They must get a game going pretty quickly because a round of cheering and whooping goes up, leaving Patrick feeling cold inside. 

After a little while, their door opens back up and Jonny sidles back into the room.

“You okay?” Jonny asks, thumping down at the foot of Patrick’s bed besides Patrick’s head. He’s lost the bottle of whiskey, but he’s got a can of shitty Bud Light in one hand now. 

Patrick breathes out. “How’d you know?”

Jonny snorts. “Dude, I saw you. You weren’t real stealth about it. Getting a beej in an unlocked bathroom? You may as well have invited me in,” Jonny teases.

“I didn’t notice…”

“No shit. You were a little preoccupied,” Jonny replies fondly.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Patrick rolls closer to his hip.

“Dude, if you wanted me to know…” Jonny pauses meaningfully. “It didn’t change anything. If I’d walked in on you with some chick from Alpha Sigma Tau it would still be the same. Fist pump, bro, good on you.”

Patrick snorts into his covers. 

“You coulda told me though,” Jonny says. “No judgment from this corner.”

Patrick snorts. That time, with that kid, shit Patrick doesn’t even know his name, he was thinking about Jonny. About sliding his dick past Jonny’s pink lips, about those big brown eyes looking up at him, of running his fingers through Jonny’s hair, feeling the fade on the back of his neck as he pushed him down on his cock. He’s getting hard just thinking about it, and he’s glad he’s lying on his stomach.

“Hey, Patrick?” Jonny says.

“Hmm,” Patrick says, pushing himself upon onto his arms.

“Can I try something?” he asks. “Just once.”

Patrick blinks at him. “Yeah, what?” 

Jonny leans in and presses his mouth softly over Patrick’s. Patrick makes a noise in the back of his throat, caught off guard. Jonny slides fingers over his skull and tips his chin back so that Patrick’s neck is tilted at an odd angle, but it’s easier for Jonny to sweep his tongue into his mouth, kiss him wet and unfinessed, cheap alcohol flavoring the whole thing. 

Jonny pulls back, leaving Patrick staring at him. “Is this your way of telling me you’re flexible too?” Patrick asks breathily.

“Nah man,” Jonny replies, “then I’d just say, sometimes I let bros touch my dick. This is me saying I want to touch _your_ dick. I mean, if you’d be into it.”


	22. Two Rules Alternate POV - Patrick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick's point of view of [Two Rules](http://archiveofourown.org/works/942536).

Patrick never wanted to give a fuck about Jonathan Toews. That’s the honest truth. He didn’t want to like him—solemn and dark-eyed and frankly a weird motherfucker, and yet he may as well have knocked Patrick flat on his ass. All his life Patrick had struggled and fought to be where he was, and he’d done it with the biggest blazing smile on his face like nothing could get him down. Patrick was going to own the world one day. He’d show them all. But then he was taken down by Jonny in one fell swoop at World Juniors, sunk even deeper at prospect camp and the way playing with him just felt right. He didn’t want to care so much about somebody who didn't feel the same way. He felt the injustice of that keenly. Nobody should get to have those parts of him. Not unless they were as butt-crazy, head-over-heels as he was. And Jonny wasn’t.

Jonny had a girl at UND at the time and a vision for the Blackhawks and a smile for the way he could see Patrick fitting into it. He had Patrick’s heart on his key-ring and he didn’t even know it.

And Patrick knew it wasn’t reasonable or acceptable from an outside perspective, but he was hostile to Jonny right out of the gate, because the last thing he wanted was for Jonny to know and to use that shit. People had in the past. He’d been little and yet so unstoppable. They’d used everything they could—his more-than-buddies feelings about other boys, his looks. He’d learned fast not to open himself up to that.

And after a while, Jonny started giving as good as he got, and it fucked Patrick’s shit up, every time, but he didn’t know how to be any other way. 

Years of vitriol later, and somehow the first time he kissed Jonny felt like coming home. A part of him had wanted to tear Jonny apart, because of course. That was just how this went. Jonny made Patrick weak for him. He made Patrick want so much, things that could never happen and things he could never have.

“Sick bitch,” Jonny had said, because Patrick didn't know how to take this thing he wanted without sabotaging himself. Neverthless, it had hit Patrick like a body blow, but still Jonny had been there with him. Somehow, even with Patrick hard on the offensive, trying to hurt Jonny, to make him back off, he’d wound up on that floor underneath Patrick, moaning, arching up into Patrick’s fist as he pulled him off.

He wasn’t the only sick bitch. Huh. 

After that the only thing Patrick wanted was to have that again—Jonny under his palms, breathing harsh and loud, losing it, making Patrick come. It made him feel wild and spun out. This was not a desire he liked, this was not a part of himself he wanted to have. But oh god, Jonny wound up coming to him, swinging by his apartment three weeks later with a six pack of beer in tow. The truth was Patrick loved his stupid ass so much, had wanted Jonny only second to hockey. Even as everything inside him fought it, because what exactly was Jonny offering? A cheap, dirty fuck where Jonny exorcised years of pent up anger against him? Still, Patrick couldn’t resist him. And afterwards, lying on his bed, adesperate orgasm still reverbing through him and Jonny falling asleep tangled in his sheets, he’d been so incandescently happy it made his heart feel too big inside his chest.

The next morning when he woke up with Jonny gone he told himself it was everything he expected and that he wasn't going to do it again. That he didn't need this. That he could find someone else. 

But that was a lie, ultimately he couldn’t stay away. He lasted three weeks and then he provoked Jonny just to see what he would do. It was so beautifully easy to get a reaction out of him, and when he got him back home, so easy to take him apart with his mouth. In that moment, Patrick had had all the power. He’d owned Jonny and they both knew it. 

He'd laughed, told Jonny to look at him when he came. See that it was Patrick who'd got him off so hard and good and fast that he sobbed. 

And then Jonny did what he always did—he changed the play up. He’d thrown Patrick’s very words back in his face.

‘Look at me,’ he’d demanded in echo of Patrick’s own pronouncement, his fingers sunk inside Patrick, a foreign sensation that nevertheless had him dreaming for Jonny's cock. For a moment Patrick could almost believe—he could almost see what this would be like to have this for real. Jonny had kissed his wrist so delicately and tenderly, and when Patrick said his name as he'd come, the look on his face was soft and warm. He harbored faint hopes that perhaps he wasn't alone in this. 

Those came crashing down when he’d woken up and found Jonny asleep on his couch, rather than in the bed next to him. This too, he supposed, was to be expected.

And then Jonny got himself injured again, a tragic shoulder separation that took him out for the rest of the season. The last time when Jonny had hidden his concussion and then dizzily driven into a support beam Patrick had been so furious at him he hadn’t been able to speak to him for months. He’d hated Jonny for making him worry so desperately, for making him want to be there when the paramedics came.

This time, he was just resigned to the simple unmitigated desire that he wanted to kiss Jonny better and hold him close–a desire he’d never be able to express.

He visited with the rest of the guys, and afterwards, looking at Jonny’s scared face, he cracked right open and laid his feelings bare for the first time. He didn’t know what else to do, and when Jonny told Patrick he didn’t believe him, Patrick found himself defending them. He had wanted to give these feelings away, heap them on somebody else for such a long time, but also, loving Jonny had become as intrinsic as breathing. He wouldn’t know how to stop.

And yet Jonny had shattered him completely. He’d looked into Patrick’s eyes and for once, Patrick knew he had Jonny as much as Jonny had him.

“Fuck you,” he’d wanted to say, because it still wasn’t fair how Jonny could just throw his world out of order. But instead he’d kissed him with everything he had inside him and he finally let those hopes expand in his chest rather than fighting them.


	23. Breathplay as Rookies, July 2015

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: Rookie year, in a hotel room in St. Paul. Jonny's trying to sleep and Pat won't shut the fuck up. Maybe a surprise blow job will do the trick.

“Yeah, so his parents sent him off to theater camp that year, rather than the skills camp with us and he was just so mad, you know? But of course, girls. Which you know, we didn’t have at all. When we came back in the fall he wouldn’t shut up about all the chicks he’d finger banged.”

“Kinda like how you won’t shut up right now?” Jonny muttered into his mattress, pillow dragged over his ears. It still wasn’t enough to drown Kaner out, who’d been going on and on ever since lights out, just chatting propped against his pillows, while he played Bejeweled in the dark. Jonny was exhausted and he’d felt a little off in practice today. He really needed to get to sleep so they could be ready for the game against the Wild tomorrow.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Jonny, do you want to sleep?” Patrick replied. “You don’t want to tell me some more about your three shootout goals for Canada?”

“Jesus Christ,” Jonny replied. “It was a joke. A fucking joke.”

“Hmm,” Patrick said consideringly, not looking away from his phone. “So anyway, he’s got HPV now, and he’s seeing this chick and he really likes her, and he’s like ‘what do I do?’ You know because you have to tell ladies these things, and I was like, ‘man, you just have to tell her,’ and he got fucking pissed. Like I’ve never heard him this mad. I don’t know what I was supposed to say there, like, I dunno, buddy, write her a card? ‘How do you feel about genital warts?’”

“I hate you,” he grit out. 

“You say the sweetest things, man,” Patrick said.

Jonny’s fraying temper finally snapped. He rolled out of bed with a growl, hauling his pillow up and giving Patrick a good whack with it. Patrick made a noise of protest, but before he could get his own pillow up, Jonny dropped down on top of him.

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” he said, punctuating each word with another thump while Patrick laughed and batted at him.

“You’re insane, you’re insane!” Patrick cried, choked with laughter, trying to fight him off while Jonny smacked him in the face again.

Jonny caught him in the face with the pillow again, this time pushing down, smothering him. He waited just long enough for Patrick to start to struggle underneath him in earnest, fighting for air, before pressing down hard one last time. “No more talking,” he said severely, and lifted the pillow.

Patrick gasped as he pulled it away from his face, inhaling deeply, so deeply he coughed, hand coming up to thump himself on the chest.

Jonny looked down at him, a little concerned. “You okay?” he asked, leaning back, trying to give him a little more space, coming down right over his dick by accident and…oh.

“Uh…” he said dumbly. There wasn’t enough light to see the color of Patrick’s cheeks, but he could tell from the way he was biting at his lips that he was mortified, eyes widening with panic. “Is that uh…something you’re into?”

“Get off!” Patrick cried, hands coming up to strike out at him.

Any sane person would get up. Jonny had just found out his winger was popping boners from being smothered. Well, Jonny definitely wasn’t going to win any awards for perfect mental health. He didn’t know many people around these parts who would. Jonny caught Patrick’s wrists and pinned them back to the pillow beside his face. Patrick was glaring up at him, lips bitten swollen and full, eyes flashing. He looked mad as hell.

“Jesus, it’s okay, you don’t have to be embarrassed,” Jonny protested. “I’m just curious.”

Patrick flexed his hands and hissed, “Yeah well, read a fucking blogpost.”

“What do they call it? Auto-erotic—?”

“Auto-erotic asphyxiation,” Patrick said with a sigh, anger visibly draining out of him as he rolled his cheek into the pillow. “And I’ve…I’ve never actually done it.”

Jonny hummed and settled his weight over him, taking in Patrick’s curls on the pillow and the still stubborn just of his jaw. 

“Jonny!” Patrick cried, hips jerking against him. “Get off. I’m serious.”

Jonny hummed again and let go of one of Patrick’s hands, circling his fingers around Patrick’s throat. “It’s kinda hot,” Jonny told him, depressing slightly on his windpipe, smiling at Kaner’s immediate shocked gasp and the fraught roll of his hips, grinding up against Jonny’s ass like he was unable to stop himself.

“You better—you better not be fucking with me,” Patrick replied breathlessly, throat moving under Jonny’s fingers.

“I’m not fucking with you,” Jonny answered, he ground back against Patrick a little, feeling the thick width of him riding up against the crease of his ass. He tightened his hold, dragging his thumb down into the hollow of Patrick’s throat. Patrick bit down on his lip, even white teeth dragging the red flesh back into his mouth to suck on. It was a move straight out of porn and Patrick did it all the time without even realizing.

Jonny bent his head and kissed him, rocking back against Patrick’s dick, making them both grunt, the fabric of their briefs making a shushing noise with every roll of his hips. Patrick tasted like toothpaste, the stupid Crest gel that he always got all over the counters in hotel rooms.

“You’ll be quiet after this?” Jonny asked when he pulled back. Now he was the one who was short of breath. Each drag of his dick against Patrick’s was a sweet shock to the system and the escalating throb of Patrick’s pulse in his throat right against Jonny’s fingertips was making his own heartbeat speed up.

“Is that—why you’re doing this?” Patrick asked. He moaned when Jonny tightened his grip around Patrick’s throat just a little bit more. He was gasping now, each inhalation a labored drag. It took him a long time to get out the next sentence. “Because…I gotta tell you…I…I…do what I want.”

“Whatever, Kaner,” Jonny replied bending back down to kiss him, pushing his tongue into Patrick’s mouth. He felt Patrick’s breaths coming in little short gasps out of his nose and let up a little bit with the pressure of his hand.

Patrick arched against him, muscles gone taut, and when Jonny pulled back to look down at him, his eyes were squeezed shut tight. He let out a soft little, “Oh,” and came right there in underwear, swallowing against the loosened collar of Jonny’s fingers. Jonny stared down at him in open-mouthed wonder, before frantically getting his dick out past the elastic waistband and pulling himself off with harsh quick strokes. Patrick slowly opened his eyes, dreamily blinking, and Jonny came with a groan, cupping his other hand at the head to catch the jizz.

“Um,” Patrick said.

Jonny slumped over onto his back next to Patrick, breathing hard, his hand still full of his come. Patrick opened his mouth like he wanted to say something before deciding better of it. Instead he reached up, running his palm along his own throat, expression turning thoughtful. He pressed down with his fingers, just like Jonny had, and Jonny cleared his throat, cheeks flushing hot as he rolled out of bed to clean up. He couldn’t believe he’d just gone for it, choking Patrick like that. But it had been hot—the way Patrick had responded so immediately and easily. He wasn’t going to examine it too closely.

Patrick remained quiet and still in his bed. Usually he stayed up later than Jonny, watching TV or playing games on his cellphone, but he didn’t start playing Bejeweled again.

“Jonny?” he said, just as Jonny was starting to drop off.

Jonny wondered if the was going to be a return to the horrible anecdotes from earlier.

“Yeah?”

“What if I wanted to do that again?” Patrick asked.

“Careful,” Jonny replied, “Next time I might shut you up with my dick.”

“Promise?” Patrick shot back, impishly.


	24. Words They'll Write On My Tombstone Alternate POV - Jonny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timestamp from Jonny's POV from the [Words They'll Write On My Tombstone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/863481)

On the day that Patrick finally asks to play pitcher, he’s clearly not expecting Jonny to simply say yes. 

“What?” he replies, mouth open a little, at a loss. They’re sitting on the couch, watching a movie, and Patrick picks up the remote and pauses it like he hasn’t heard Jonny properly. 

“Yes,” Jonny repeats, shrugging. He hasn’t given a lot of thought to it honestly, but Patrick is pretty much his favorite person on the planet, so if that’s what he wants, Jonny wants to give it to him. 

“Wait fuck, what? You weren’t supposed to say yes that easy!” Patrick says, still blindsided and also looking a little miffed. “Dude, I came up with an entire argument and everything.” 

Jonny smirks at him. “What can I say? I’m a versatile guy.”

“No, but at the end of my awesome argument, you were gonna bow down before my superior logic,” Patrick says. 

Jonny shifts against the armrest of the couch, so that he’s facing Patrick fully. “Oh well then no. I refuse to let you put your dick in me ever. I won’t be persuaded. Don’t even try.”

“Your sarcasm is noted for later,” Patrick replies darkly. 

Jonny grins and knocks Patrick’s knee with his own. “I’ll bet it is.”

Patrick grabs at his leg, pulling it over into his lap as he caresses Jonny’s kneecap with his thumb, shaking his head a little as he turns back to the TV.

“Well go on then,” Jonny says, shifting on the couch so that his other leg is in Patrick’s lap and putting his arms up behind his head in a nonchalant pose. “Please regale me with your fabulous argument.”

“Hmm,” Patrick says, dropping his head against the back of the couch and meeting Jonny’s eyes. “Well, I like getting my dick wet.” 

He punctuates this pronouncement with a slow lick across his lower lip that isn’t anything other than pornography. Jonny naturally thinks of those pretty lips wrapped around his cock. Everytime. Even in the normal course of life where Patrick is putting totally mundane things into his mouth, like celery or protein shakes. How even, Jonny doesn’t know. There really should be no way to make celery sexy, and yet, well, Jonny has had to resign himself to having a lot of inappropriate associations with food. He refrains from asking if Patrick’s inescapably sound logic is just making Jonny think about blowjobs a lot. Mostly, because the only thing that makes Patrick’s obscene mouth even moderately bearable is that he simply doesn’t know. what. he’s. doing. to Jonny. Or anybody else, he has to imagine. He can’t be the only one so affected. 

Patrick continues, “And you’re like a sex wizard—”

Jonny snorts. “Back to that again are we?” he asks dryly. 

Patrick levels a look at him. “Jonny, what’s the most you’ve made a chick come?”

“What, in a single sitting? Or do you mean over the course of a day?”

“Ugh!” Patrick thunks his head back against the couch. 

Jonny’s likes sex. He likes it a lot. He especially likes it with Patrick. He knows some people have trouble doing the right thing, which honestly, Jonny doesn’t understand. All you need to do is listen and respond accordingly. Sex is not rocket science, it’s just bodies moving together. Jonny does know he’s good in bed, but that’s just because he tries. And sex is fun, he doesn’t know why other dudes are apparently so lazy or taking porn as a reference point. They don’t think people in real life could survive ten bullet wounds and a car accident like a character in an action movie. Why on earth would they believe balling some girl at top speed would be, you know, something that could actually work? It shouldn’t be acknowledged as any kind of victory that every other dude is embarrassingly bad and that’s why he looks so good by comparison.  
Patrick and Jonny just work really well together–on a line, on the ice, or fucking–that’s what makes it next level shit. If Patrick seriously thinks it’s like this with everybody, he’s on fucking crank. 

“Yeah, so sex wizard,” Patrick starts up again while Jonny rolls his eyes. “Honestly, with all your ‘skillz’ I think you on my cock would be an excellent time.”

“What skills? I have never bottomed before. Your superior logic is actually crap,” Jonny replies. “Like really crap.” 

“Jonny,” Patrick replies exasperatedly. “At this point, with how this shit goes, I fully expect you to have a magic ass. I mean look at that thing.”

“Well my magic ass is sending you a C & D,” Jonny replies, leaning forward to kiss Patrick deep and slow. When he pulls back he nuzzles along Patrick’s jaw and asks, “So that was your superior logic, huh? You couldn’t actually have expected me to say yes to that.”

Patrick turns his head and draws their mouths back together, distracting Jonny for a good long while before he breaks the kiss, meeting Jonny’s eyes square on, and says, “No, I was just gonna say, ‘Jon, I really want it.’”

Well fuck. The little shit definitely has his number.


	25. Sequel To "You Help Me Lose My Mind" (June 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick and Jonny figure their shit out. 
> 
> In case you guys need a refresher, this is [You Help Me Lose My Mind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/857243), basically the baseball cap porn, lol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> demotu asked: Also, how about a post-2013-cup-win timestamp for You Help Me Lose My Mind? I mean, adding more to that fic is clearly unnecessary, but I'm gonna ask anyway.
> 
> Ugh, sorry I took so long. To anybody who reads thisssss, please go listen to [this song](https://soundcloud.com/m83/i-need-you-from-divergent) by M83 (https://soundcloud.com/m83/i-need-you-from-divergent), don’t make too much fun of me for the origin of it, lol. The important bit starts about a minute in. YOU WILL KNOW WHEN YOU HEAR IT, lol.  
> -June 2014

In some ways Jonathan thinks he’s drunk more on the exhaustion and euphoria, than on the alcohol he’s been steadily feeding himself for the last few hours. It feels good to be in street clothes, just a plain old t-shirt and jeans, without the weight of pads or the stiffness of his game day suits. It’s sweaty and disgusting in here, he’s sticky with champagne and beer, and the smoothness of his own cheeks keeps startling him.

Patrick’s across the room, standing on a stool, finger in the air, singing along to “Wild One” while Stahlberg braces him from falling over. Every breath Jonathan takes seems to swell up more than his chest, it feels like his heart could just rise right up out of his body.

Patrick turns, wobbling a little, but his eyes unerringly meet Jonathan’s across the room and the dancing bodies of their teammates and fans between them. Patrick’s face is strangely solemn and it’s like all the sound drops out of the room, there’s nobody here but them and the space between their bodies seems infinite.

Patrick drops his eyes, tentative almost. Jonathan is frozen, everything inside him contracting tight, and then Patrick looks back up and grins, a slow flash of white teeth. The world snaps back into place, and Patrick tilts his head towards the back stairs, with raised brows. Jonathan nods.

It’s hard work pushing through the drunken debauched tumult with everybody trying to pat his shoulder or shake his hand, but at least he makes it and finds Patrick strangely unmolested, already leaning in the door frame, arms crossed.

He shakes his head, that sweet grin still firmly in place. It’s tight and dark enough in here, that he feels no shame reaching out with a finger to tug Jonathan in by his belt loop.

“Danger, Will Robinson,” Jonathan says anyway, not quite able to let caution go. This close, he has to bend his head to meet Patrick’s eyes. Their lips hover millimeters apart and Patrick eyes drop. He tilts his chin up, slowly, like he’s actually going to kiss Jonathan right here in front of a thousand possibly recording phone cameras. Jonathan doesn’t flinch or pull away and Patrick’s mouth stops just the barest whisper of space away from his own.

Patrick chuckles and then slides out from between Jonathan and the door frame to take the stairs leading to the roof two at a time. Jonathan blows out a breath and has to laugh, following after him.

Patrick stops in front of the access door to the roof. The plaque on it says ‘open and alarm will sound,’ he looks back over his shoulder at Jonathan with his hand suspended over the push bar.

“What do you think?”

“Guess we’ll find out.” Jonathan puts his hand over Patrick’s and uses it to push the door open. It glides open smoothly, both of them wait, chins tilted towards the ceiling--no sirens.

Patrick laughs and pushes the door all the way open, the humid Chicago night heat hitting them. The roof is gravel and it crunches underfoot as they make their way out. There’s a low railing that would make anybody afraid of heights nervous. Patrick sticks to his side, eyeing it nervously as Jonathan walks over to see the crowds of people still out in front of the club.

“Jesus,” Jonathan says, he can hear Sharpy yelling something down at the assembled hoard of fans. They raise their hands and cheer and Jonathan pulls back before somebody spots them.

“I love you,” Patrick says to his back.

Jonathan turns. His hands are shoved in his pockets, and he looks relaxed, face impassive.

Patrick shrugs. “Like, I know it might just be fucking or whatever, but…”

Jonathan stops him, sliding a hand over his shoulder to tug on the brim of his backwards baseball cap, using it to pull Patrick’s head back on his neck, tilting Patrick’s chin on the perfect slant to kiss him. The move is familiar by now.

He presses his mouth to Patrick’s, paying special attention to the perfect curve of his full lower lip, the one that Patrick worries desperately with his teeth, all the time. When he pulls back, hand still on Patrick’s hat brim.

“You have to know I want whatever you’ll give me,” Jonathan tells him. “The question is will you take what I have in return.”

Patrick chuckles weakly. He’s just won the second Stanley Cup of his career, got awarded playoff MVP, has a hundred people cheering his name just forty feet below them, and he looks broken up. “I love you,” he repeats, like it’s that simple.

Maybe it is.

“Yeah, me too,” Jonathan replies.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](the4freedoms.tumblr.com/). I can usually be persuaded to write more.


End file.
